


The Hero's Way Home

by justmyluckiness



Series: The Hero's Way [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-08-28 18:03:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8456404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justmyluckiness/pseuds/justmyluckiness
Summary: Emma's awake but wounded. Now she and her entire family have to deal with the consequences of her actions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I claim no ownership of...well anything really.

“Is she alive?” Snow nearly shrieked.

David rushed forward to check Regina’s pulse, exhaling in relief when he felt the strong, steady thrum of her heartbeat. “She’s just exhausted her energy. We need to get her to the hospital so she can rest and get some fluids.”

Snow flung her hand to the open door. “Storybrooke’s only ambulance just left!”

“Then I guess I’m the ambulance.” He gathered Regina in his arms bridal-style, shaking off the irrelevant thought that she was much smaller than he expected her to be. Her regal stature and commanding presence directed attention away from her physical dimensions. Sidling out of the doorway to avoid smacking her head on the frame, he rushed down the stairs as fast as possible, Snow right on his heels. When they got to the truck, she reclined the seat so he could lay the Mayor down.

“Snow,” he started, but she didn’t give him the chance.

“Go! Take her and check on Emma. I’ll get Henry and Neal,” his wife exclaimed, giving him a kiss before dashing off.

He shook his head, bounding into the drivers’ seat to rush Regina to Storybrooke General Hospital.

* * *

_Beep._

... “She’s losing a lot of blood! Get a bag started NOW!”

_Beep._

… “BP is ninety-five over sixty and dropping fast!”

_Beep. Beep._

… “She’s losing way too much blood! We need to get it stopped fast!”

_Beep. Beep._

… “Hanging two units of O-positive and running fluids wide open now!”

_Beep. Beep._

… “Can’t this bucket of bolts go any faster?”

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “Yeah, Storybrooke OR: we have a female stab victim en route. Bad shape. Possibly compromised organs. BP is falling and pulse is skyrocketing. We need an OR ready to go yesterday!”

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “Do we have any ID on the patient?”

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “Are you kidding me? It’s the Saviour!”

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “Holy shit we have to move. Tell the doc to be waiting in the ambulance bay. She might not last all the way to the OR.”

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “Pulse is getting worse! How far out?”

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “Two more miles. Pushing as fast as I can go on these streets!”

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “We don’t have much more time! Get us to the ER as fast as you can!”

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

… “Pulse is crashing! Charging the paddles!”

… “CLEAR!” _ZAP!_

… “Nothing! Trying again. Come on, stay with me here!”

…. “CLEAR!” _ZAP!_

_Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep._

* * *

For once Emma wasn’t in the fiery room.

Darkness enveloped her, surrounded her. As consciousness slowly returned, she felt like she was swimming through a vat of maple syrup. Her body felt leaden, making the syrupy sensation more intense. She fought to wake up, too used to the slumber to wake up that quickly.

The blackness started to turn to grey, another color she hadn’t seen in a very long time. Her limbs started to feel less sluggish, but when she tried to sit up, the searing pain shooting down her side dropped her back. She concentrated all her energy on waking up, but it felt like she was drunker than she’d ever been in her life.

Awareness was coming slowly, but it was coming back. She tried to sit up, her limbs refused to obey her mind’s command to push. Emma grunted with the effort, gritting her teeth against sudden agony ripping through her abdomen. Screwing her eyes closed, she forced her mind to push the haze away. It cleared slowly, with a reluctance that surprised her. An indeterminate amount of time later – since she couldn’t exactly look at a clock; light started making her vision brighter as the fog cleared enough that she could start making out shapes.

There was a strange pattern of squares over her head. They were fascinating, and she spent an uncertain amount of time just staring at them. As her eyes cleared, she saw banks of fluorescent lights, built-in sprinklers, and heard the hum of electronics that she couldn’t see. Lifting her head the small amount she was able to with the ache pounding against the inside of her skull, Emma saw that she was in a hospital room, which made sense given the abdominal pain. Her arms were growing lighter with her increasing awareness, and her fingers twitched in an effort to move.

With another effort, she was able to turn her head to learn more of her situation. A series of tubes connected her to an even larger series of machines. A painful tube down her throat was forcing her to breathe. There was an IV drip in her elbow, a pulse ox on her finger, and the slight discomfort in her groin was…she lifted the sheet…yes, she had a catheter. Emma whimpered a little. In the corner of her eye, she noticed a jagged black line running down her side. Stitches.

 _Oh God,_ she thought, _the Dark One found a way to wake me and has me trapped for his plan. He’s probably going to siphon my magic and use it to destroy the town. Either that or Ingrid finally got to me and needs to me for her own plan. They just need to get to me as soon as I’m out of here._

The reality of her helplessness set in and in her growing panic, Emma started gasping for breath around the breathing tube, which started the cycle of increasing pain driving increasing panic and increasing breathing rates, sending her agony even higher. Her pulse started racing, echoed by the frantic beeping from the heart monitor. The commotion eventually brought a pair of nurses and a large orderly rushing into her room. The orderly immediately put both hands on her shoulders, pushing her upper body back against the bed. Normally a strong woman, Emma was powerless against such force in her weakened state.

“Princess Emma! You have to calm down,” the blonde nurse, a young woman about Emma’s age, pleaded. “This tube is helping you breathe! I know it’s uncomfortable but you have to let it do its work. The doctor will be along presently now that you’re awake to see if you’re ready to come off it.”

While the first nurse tried to reason with her, the second, a brunette who seemed a bit older to Emma’s frantically assessing eyes, started fiddling with the various machines in the room, bringing an end to the cacophony. Eventually Emma gave up the pointless struggle and sat back against the bed. Nurse Number Two joined her colleague. “Good. We’re going to go get the surgeon for you, so he can check his work and tell all of us what the next steps will be. Can you be a good girl long enough for that?”

In her newly-wakened state, everything Emma saw was a threat to her. She’d pricked her finger with the Sleeping Curse with the belief that Rumplestiltskin and the Snow Queen were coming for her body, blood, and very soul, and waking up in a hospital with a wound in her side drove that panic.

Her only chance was to get the nurses and orderly out of the room. Unable to speak, Emma nodded, watching warily as they made their way back to their stations. Ignoring the stabbing pain in her side, she struggled to her feet, fighting the panic and pain. She had to escape.

She counted to ten and pulled the pulse ox off her finger. That was the easy part. Wincing, Emma yanked out the IV, ignoring the blood that welled up at the injection site. Gritting her teeth as best she could around the breathing tube, she reached under the sheets and withdrew the catheter, trying not to gasp at how much it hurt. Last but most certainly not least, she took the breathing tube and pulled it out centimeter by agonizing centimeter. The sensation of something being removed from her esophagus was jarring, and when it scraped against the back of her throat it triggered her gag reflex. She tried to get most of the bile she vomited into the garbage pail next to her bed, but wasn’t entirely successful.

Emma took a quick drink from the small cup of water the orderly had left, loving the feeling of the cold water soothing her traumatized throat. Throwing her legs over the side of the bed, she eased onto her feet, ignoring the cacophony of beeps, buzzes, and squeals from the machines surrounding her bed. Her head swam, but Emma shook it off, desperate to escape.

A few more staggering steps saw her to the hallway. Grunting at the strain on her body and trying to ignore the abdominal pain, Emma eased into the passage. Bumping into a cart next to her door, Emma had to lunge to maintain her balance and felt a tugging in the same spot where her pain was. As she recovered her balance, she felt a warm something trickling down her leg.

Fortunately for her, no dark magic users appeared to chase after her. As she moved to her left, she reached out for the handle on the wall to keep her balance on her unsteady legs. Footsteps sounded behind her, causing her to struggle down the hall even faster. There was no way that Gold or Ingrid was going to get her in their clutches.

Her knees finally gave out at the same time her consciousness failed her. The last thing she heard before face-planting onto the floor was the sound of people rushing up behind her.

* * *

Regina’s trip back to wakefulness was much less traumatic than Emma’s. She also woke up with an IV replacing her fluids, but as her magic replenished she gradually came out of her coma. Her eyes blinked open slowly, confused by the bright lights after the darkness in her house. Recognizing the décor of a medical facility along with the IV pumping fluid into her veins, she flashed back to the last memory she had – kissing Emma and collapsing – and deduced that she was in Storybrooke’s hospital recovering from her massive magical depletion.

Henry was sitting in the chair, scribbling away in a notebook. The rush of warmth that flooded through her at seeing that her son cared enough to sit by her bed while he worked on his homework surprised her, but she was too out of it still to care too much. Her son loved her, and that was all her world needed in that moment.

“Henry?” she rasped, throat scratchy from being unused.

His head snapped over to her with an ear-to-ear smile. “Mom! You’re awake!”

“How long have I been asleep for?” She asked, struggling to sit up in the bed.

Henry sprang over to help, easing her up with a hand under her arm and surprising her with his strength. Her little boy was growing up. “Just overnight. Dr. Whale said he wasn’t sure how much, the magic you used affected your overall energy; and no one would let Blue in to look at you.”

With a grimace, she swallowed some of the ice water he handed her from the tray next to her bed, but the cool relief it brought her throat was worth it. “What happened to Gold?”

She was prepared for quite a few different doomsday scenarios, from Rumplestiltskin using the Author to return to the Enchanted Forest to the Author making Gold the king of Storybrooke, Maine, the United States, or this entire realm, but Henry’s laughter wasn’t one of them. “Well, um, about that. Here’s the thing: he’s nuts.”

“We all knew _that_ ,” she snarked back at him with a smile that belied her true feeling.

He shook his head, laughing harder. “No, no. I mean it literally. The True Love’s Kiss pulse that woke Ma up somehow was so powerful that it removed the enchantment from the ink. It must have sensed the malice in his intent, or something. The ink is useless, and he kind of lost it. Blue showed up and was able to freeze him in place before putting on a magic-suppressing cuff. The other fairies used some fairy dust and the last of their squid ink to enchant the bars of a prison cell in the mines. He can’t get out, and when he realized that, Gramps kind of went crazy. He was raving about getting his son back and a bunch of other nonsense.”

“So there’s no more Dark One to trouble Storybrooke?”

“According to the Blue Fairy, even if his heart gives out and he dies, when the Darkness escapes his body, the enchantment is strong enough to keep that behind those bars. The Dark One is gone forever, mom!” Henry exclaimed.

“I can’t believe it,” Regina breathed, feeling a weight almost tangibly roll off her shoulders.

“Believe it, Mom. It’s all over now.”

She took a deep breath, feeling her strength return and wishing it helped her courage. “What about Emma?”

Henry’s light-hearted face took on a darker look, and when he spoke, his voice was subdued. “It was rough for a while. Whale said that if you hadn’t stopped her bleeding for a few minutes and the paramedics hadn’t gotten to the hospital when they did, she’d have bled out. I didn’t understand all the details, but he said something about her spleen being lacerated along with a major artery. They had to do some major surgery, but she came through it okay.”

“So is she awake somewhere in this same building?”

“Weeeelll…..” he trailed off, knowing she wasn’t going to like his answer.

“Henry?” Regina asked, dread settling like a concrete ball in her belly.

He sighed, and looked at his feet before meeting her gaze. “She did wake up already, but somehow it must have been before she was ready, because apparently she tried to…well…escape.”

“She _what?!_ ” Regina yelled, immediately regretting the abuse on her sore throat.

“She must have thought that Grandpa or Ingrid had gotten her after all, because she pulled out all the tubes connecting her to the machines and got into the hallway. She tried to use magic to get away when she heard people coming to get her back in her bed, but it didn’t work. I guess after being out for so long and then having major surgery she wasn’t in any condition to try that, so they were able to get her back in bed.”

Regina huffed. “I hope they gave the foolish woman a heavy sedative after that little escapade.”

At this Henry grinned. “Oh yeah they did. She’s been out for a while now.”

An idea occurred to Regina, one that would be best for all concerned, but she knew that telling her son to do it would only get him in trouble with Emma when she found out. “I know what to do to help her, but it’s something that I won’t ask anyone else to do. I’m feeling much better, much stronger now that I’ve had a chance to sleep off the weariness. Let’s get me checked out and home so I can pick up some supplies.”

“Are you going to heal her with magic?”

Pursing her lips, she looked at her son with the scolding expression he remembered from before the Curse broke. “I could do that, but I would need more time to build my energy reserves back up, and there would be risks.”

“Risks? What risks could there be from healing magic?” he asked

“Well, I can heal a scrape or burn in my sleep, it’s true, but with an internal injury that severe, there’s always the chance that since I couldn’t see the tissue I was trying to reknit that I’d get it wrong somehow and hurt her in the process. Plus it wouldn’t teach her anything. Sometimes people need the healing process to learn to avoid the situations that got them hurt in the first place,” she explained as only a mother could.

With a raised eyebrow, Henry waited for her to elaborate, but she only asked him to go get the nurse and let her get dressed in privacy.

* * *

The next time Emma woke up, she was alone in the same room as before. Looking around, she saw the IV connected to her arm, felt the catheter down below, and heard the steady beeping and hissing of the vital sign monitors. The only difference this time was they were accompanied by a cannula to help her breathe better.

She sighed, but took comfort in the familiarity. Having almost escaped once already, she was confident in her ability to make it out again.

Reaching to unhook her IV, she found the attempt cut short. Something cold and hard rattled against her wrists when she tried to move them. She knew what they were even before her eyes confirmed the handcuffs binding her to the bed rails. When she tried to kick her feet in frustration, Emma discovered they were secured to the bottom of the bed with soft straps.

It was difficult, but she’d escaped from worse ever since she’d discovered her ability to use magic. Closing her eyes, Emma tried to summon her powers, willing herself free of the bindings.

Nothing happened.

“Shit!” she hissed, feeling the pain of using her throat. Her magic must still be depleted after expending so much to protect her sleeping place. Then as she shifted, she felt an unexpected sensation along her right wrist. Looking down, she saw the leather magic-suppressing cuff they’d used on Cora.

“Son of a BITCH!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See chapter 1 for disclaimer.

Emma swam in and out of consciousness, moving from one half-formed dreamscape to another. At one point she thought she was flying over the mountains and woods of the Enchanted Forest, speaking to the Dryads and Naiads of those realms. Another time she thought she could feel a bed under her with a hard rail to her side, and for some reason she thought she smelled apples.

The only person she’s ever associated with apples is Regina, though, and that’s just a stupid thought. There wouldn’t be any way that Regina would be near her.

When awareness finally found her, the first sensation she experienced was the sound of clicking. It was a strange sound, and she tried to furrow her brow, but her body wasn’t exactly obeying her commands just yet. Concentrating her energy, Emma finally forced her eyes open. The world was bright, too bright, and she had to slam them shut again, but with them opened the first time, the second was easier. She pried her eyelids apart a tiny bit at a time, allowing to gradually increasing the amount of light to assault her vision. When she was able to look around at last; the first thing she saw was Henry pounding away at his handheld video game player.

Smiling at his way of passing the time, she tried to call for him, but her throat, unused for…however long she’d been asleep, not counting the weird fever-dream she had of trying to escape an institution of some kind, was so scratchy she quickly had a coughing fit.

At least that got his attention. “Ma!” he cried, jumping up and running to her bedside. “Doctor Whale said you’re not supposed to talk yet. You can have some ice chips to help soothe your throat but you need to rest to heal from the surgery.”

This time she was able to get her brow furrowed at his comment. Emma searched her memory but couldn’t figure out any reason for her to need surgery. Her last clear memory was the basement of Zelena’s old farmhouse.

Still, his remark about ice chips sounded like pure heaven to her parched, scratchy throat. Turning her head, she saw the plastic cup sitting on a table next to her bed, but when she reached for it, her hands would only move a few inches before stopping with a rattle.

She knew that noise. It was a sound she’d come to associate forever with criminals, bail jumpers, and other associated scum. Now it was herself handcuffed. Emma looked down at her hands, betrayal coursing through her body. “What the hell is this?” She managed to rasp.

A deep breath from the other side of her bed drew her attention. There were her parents, sitting next to her and watching in silence. “Emma,” Snow whispered, “The last time you woke up, you tried to escape the hospital and pulled out all your stitches. They had to operate again to make sure you didn’t bleed to death.”

“So you chained me to my bed like a thug?” Emma whispered, fighting through the pain to even get that much out.

“Henry, would you head down to the cafeteria and get a soda? I think this would be best if we talk about this with Emma alone,” David requested. When the teenager had nodded and left the room, he turned once more to his daughter, “We were just looking out for your own safety,” David explained, apologising but not looking apologetic.

“You know I could just magic out of these, right? So what good were you actually hoping to do?” Emma growled, screwing her eyes closed and willing her powers to come to the surface. She felt the buzzing of her energies, but it was faint, buried far below the surface. “What the hell?”

Snow had the grace to look ashamed. “Well, about that…” she glanced down at Emma’s wrist.

Her demeanor chilled the blonde to the bone. Following her mother’s eyes, she saw a plan black leather cuff around her left wrist. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” So her parents wanted her both restrained and defenseless, when there were two powerful evil sorcerers after her. They must have really wanted to start over.

“We just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t accidentally hurt anyone else or yourself,” Snow interjected, trying to explain their rationale for binding her.

“So you treat me like a criminal? I can’t even defend myself! What if Gold or Ingrid come looking for me?” Emma’s eyes started darting back and forth, her claustrophobia kicking in at the thought of being unable to move as the villains closed in on her.

Snow reached out and pressed a button on the remote next to the bed, elevating the head so she could look at Emma better. Taking her daughter’s wrist in a gentle hold, she tried to provide as much reassurance as she could by maintaining skin-to-skin contact. “They’re both gone. Just after Ingrid cast the Spell of Shattered Sight Elsa’s sister showed up after she wished to find her. Anna had a bottle with a letter from her mother – Ingrid’s sister – apologizing for her actions and begging the girls to restore memories of the three sisters across Arendelle, so Ingrid undid herself, which reversed the spell. She got to see her sisters in the afterlife.”

Eyes boggling at the events that happened while she was sleeping, Emma asked the only question she could think: “What about Gold?”

For the first time that morning Emma saw her father hesitate as he answered. “Well...he needed tainted Savior blood to enchant the ink to allow the Author of Henry’s story book to write new stories after he freed him from the page in the book that the Sorcerer’s Apprentice imprisoned him in.”

Emma’s jaw was hanging open now. “So that explains this pain. Must be a stab wound in my side, right?” she asked, nodding to the place where she felt the most pain.

“How did you know that?” her mother wondered, sure she didn’t want to hear the answer.

Looking down, Emma debated how much to tell her mom. Stuck where she was, there wasn’t much she could do at the moment, and Snow was looking at her with such shining eyes that she decided offering up a little part of her past wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. “It’s not exactly my first time being stabbed,” she explained, looking down at her lap.

Snow turned slightly green at the thought while David winced as they shared a look of pure anguish. “Emma,” David began, “I know there isn’t anything we’ll ever be able to do to make up for how your childhood went, but if there was, I would do it in a heartbeat. To think of the things you had to endure breaks my heart and…”

Emma cut him off. “Not the time, David. What does my stabbing have to do with Gold not being a threat anymore?”

“Well, when we figured out a way around your barrier, we couldn’t wake you up, so eventually we moved you to a safe location, but Gold figured out where. He attacked with all the magic he has and was able to get past our defenses. Regina fought him almost to the death, but he outlasted everything she threw at him and was able to stab you.”

“Okay and why isn’t he a threat?” Emma asked the half-answers she was getting making her impatient and antsy.

“When you woke up, the pulse of magic was so strong, so pure, that it took away the darkness in your blood and removed the dark magic enchantment in the ink,” Snow explained, taking strength from her husband, “and then when he lost his last chance at a Happy Ending, Gold kind of went nuts. Blue used some fairy dust and enchanted a prison for him in the mines, but this time we searched for squid ink and anything else he could have used to escape. There’s no way out for Rumplestiltskin this time. Plus we made sure that the person bringing his meals is blind and deaf, so he can’t try to corrupt them, either.”

During her parents’ explanation, Emma had grown more and more upset. Her plan, her great effort to save herself and Storybrooke from the Dark One was almost for nothing. Gold almost got what he needed to wreak havoc with everyone, and it was only the act of waking her up that saved the day.

“What good is a Savior who can’t even save herself?” she muttered, looking for the key, a bobby pin, something she could use to get out of her handcuffs.

“What was that?” David asked.

“Nothing. So I guess one of you woke me up in time and saved the day. Great. I’d like to get out of these handcuffs and go back to my apartment now, if that’s okay with everyone.”

Snow and David shared another look. “It’s not exactly that simple,” the teacher answered.

“Of course it is. One of you gives me the key and I get out. Easy peasy,” Emma retorted, trying to play off her growing anxiety.

“First off, you couldn’t go back to your apartment anyway. You were under the Sleeping Curse for six months, so your landlord had to let the place go. We got your stuff out and moved it somewhere else. Beyond that, we don’t have the key to those cuffs,” explained her father, “And before you ask, no, these aren’t Sheriff’s Department handcuffs. These are the restraints the hospital uses to protect people considered a danger to themselves.”

“My apartment is gone? I’m homeless again?” Emma repeated in a voice she hated for how small it sounded.

“No, you’re not homeless, honey,” Snow rushed to reassure.

Shaking her head, Emma looked her mother in the eye. “Well, then I guess I can go back to the loft and get my things, right?”

“Not exactly.”

“What the hell is going on? I’m not a danger to myself? Let me go so I can get back to my life! I’m not going to kill myself!” she almost shouted.

Snow leaned forward, patting her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. “Well, you did try to escape the hospital once, and even wounded two orderlies. Before that you gave Henry your car and disappeared, and we didn’t know if you were trying to kill yourself even then.”

Emma’s head was swivelling back and forth in a frantic attempt to find an escape. “So what, I’m just chained here until you decide I can leave? I’m an adult! This is the United States! I have the right to make my own decisions! Now let me go and get someone to get this magic-blocker off me so I can heal myself!”

“I’m afraid I can’t authorize that,” Victor Whale said as he entered the room and checked her chart. “I heard you were up, Emma. You see, even in the United States, which we technically are in, even if we are not of the country or the realm, when someone is a proven danger to themselves, they can have their right to self-determination temporarily suspended and be placed under the care of another person, usually their closest relatives. In this case: your parents. They gave me the authority to restrain you, and I have the keys to those cuffs,” he patted his lab coat pocket, “And until I am satisfied that you won’t try to escape again and ruin my fine handiwork healing your wound, I’m not releasing you.”

Her parents wouldn’t even meet her eye, looking at their toes rather than face her fiery anger.

“You’re healing nicely, but you need to calm your temper down so your body can heal, or I will prescribe sedatives to make sure your blood pressure doesn’t get too high. Do you understand?” Whale asked, somehow keeping all traces of smarm from his voice.

If she wanted to remain alert and in control of her faculties, she had to calm down. That much Emma understood. “Fine,” she growled between gritted teeth. “If I can’t make any decisions about my own body right now, then I will decide this: I’m done talking right now. You can all get the hell out of my room and leave me alone.”

“Emma! We wanted to stay…” Snow protested, but the look of pure venom that Emma shot her was enough to quell Snow’s maternal instincts.

“You can send us home now,” David said gently, “But we’ll be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next until you’re ready to talk to us. Way too much has gone wrong between us to allow this to continue any further.”

“We may have done an awful job showing you until now, but we are your parents and we do love you with everything we have. From now on you won’t go a day without knowing that,” Snow promised, taking David’s hand and following Whale out of the room.

Henry peeked around the door when they’d gone, tentatively making his way back into the room and trying to avoid setting her off any farther. When he got as far as his old chair with nothing more thrown his way than a grunt, he figured he was allowed to be there. Flicking the room’s television to ESPN so Emma could catch up with the sports calendar – remembering that was her favorite channel to watch in New York, he pulled out his ear buds and went back to the game.

Sitting in silence, Emma ignored the football highlights and focused her brain on finding a way to get out of the hospital.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See chapter 1 for disclaimer.

Chapter 3: Realities

Left alone – mostly – in her hospital room, Emma withdrew into her thoughts. She was less interested in whatever football game’s highlights were currently flashing across the screen than she was in what happened to her.

Somehow she had been woken up. Someone had kissed her awake, but she couldn’t figure out who. The logical answer was either one of her parents or Henry, but their behavior made her doubt that possibility. They were on edge, almost like they were nervous about how she would react to them. It wasn’t entirely unfounded, she had to admit. After all, it was partly because of the way they treated her that she chose to put herself under the Sleeping Curse in the first place. The accusation in Snow’s voice when the light pole hit David was a fiery poker in the back of her mind.

Something was weird about the whole situation. The stream of apologies from her parents should have been a balm to the wounds on her psyche, but in reality it was off-putting. Foster parents never apologized for their abuses until the case workers were on their way over and they needed well-behaved meal tickets. Hearing the same words from her real parents after everything that happened was sounding all the old alarms in her mind years after she thought she’d buried her past.

The growing anxiety over parents’ behavior paled in comparison to how she felt about not knowing who exactly woke her up. The easy assumption was that it was one of her parents or Henry, but the way they reacted around her, by not answering her leading statement that it must have been one of them, had a warning light blaring.

Every time she’d been around or heard of someone waking up from a Sleeping Curse – especially when she’d woken Henry up from his – the first thing the cursed person saw upon waking was the one who woke them. In her case though, her stab wound had left her so weakened that all she had time to do was scream before passing out…again. Her last clear memory was pricking her finger in Zelena’s basement while mentally begging Regina’s forgiveness for ruining her life…again.

All this worrying had the unpleasant, unexpected side effect of draining what little reserves of strength she had after the surgery, leaving her sluggish. The ever-present anxiety bordering on panic of being unable to move, lying handcuffed to her bed and having her access to her magic cut off, was wrecking her mood. They didn’t even give her the fucking remote to the television, meaning she got a twenty-four hour dosage of ESPN.

They couldn’t have known, she kept telling herself, hoping that with repetition would come belief. Her parents couldn’t have known the terror that the dark memories from her past that being restrained would evoke.

The few times that the nurses had come in to change her dressings or clean out her urinary retention bag – dignity was always the first sacrifice in a hospital – scampered off the very second their jobs were done at a glare or cutting remark that she would later regret. Still the memories plagued her, leaving her a quivering, sweaty mess, fighting tears with every ounce of her strength. There were times she really thought that the nurses would come running into her room when her heart rate got so elevated.

She really wanted to miss her parents, feeling like she should miss them, but every time she softened at thinking of them, she’d reach to do something simple like scratch the itch that had been on her nose for the better part of two days, the handcuffs reminded her that she was a prisoner, which started the whole cycle again.

* * *

Her wrists sported new bandages from where the handcuffs bit into her skin as she struggled. They had to be changed every couple of hours from her renewed fighting, but early the next morning she was rattling the bars particularly hard and feeling the pain on her wrists fight through the fog of whatever painkiller they had her on.

A horrible experience made her hate pain medicine with a passion, but Emma knew that after surgery it was fairly common. The door in her room opened. Her parents hadn’t arrived yet, respecting her request to have some time to herself and keeping to visiting hours. Expecting to face another round of nurses checking her vitals, she was surprised when she heard the sound of a familiar throat clearing. “Hi, Emma.”

“Archie? What are you doing here?” She didn’t mean for her voice to sound as harsh as it did, but blood was seeping through her bandages again, driving little needles of pain right through every nerve in her wrist.

The therapist gingerly took a seat in the chair next to her bed. “I wanted to come by when I heard you’d woken up,” he began.

Emma rolled her eyes, practically the only reaction let to her in her position. “Did my parents tell you to come in here and counsel me back to sanity?”

Surprising her, he shook his head. “Actually no. Someone suggested it, and after thinking it over I requested the opportunity to talk to you from them, and I had to explain that I wouldn’t treat you like an ordinary patient.”

“Who suggested it? An ordinary patient? What the hell does that even mean?” Her head was swimming, but that might have been due to the low-level dosage of painkillers coursing through her system.

He leaned forward with a smile that she didn’t want to admit was warm and friendly. “It means I won’t treat you as a medical case, with formal procedures. I’m going to treat you like a friend.”

“Who the hell told you this?” She growled, rattling the handcuffs.

“I can’t tell you that. I’m under strict orders to maintain confidentiality. This process is all about you, Emma, and not anyone else,” he said in that voice that somehow managed to be soft and firm at the same time.

Shut down, she clicked her mouth closed and resumed staring at her feet. She’d never had a good experience opening up to counselors from the very first few that she was forced to see at school. The idea of opening up to a complete stranger, telling them what she was feeling was something she couldn’t even consider. She’d seen enough foster siblings have their trust shattered by exploitative parents to know what a bad idea that would be.

When the silence dragged on too long, he cleared his throat. “Well, if you don’t want to talk to me, I can do some talking of my own.”

She heard a rustling noise after a briefcase snapped open. “I have here some records of your experiences with counselors in school, so I was prepared for your…reticence.”

Her head snapped around so fast she was honestly surprised it didn’t crack a bone. “How in the hell did you get those? I was told those records were private, sealed when I left the system.”

“Well, when you were found, we thought you might end up needing some intensive therapy to help you work through whatever made you put yourself under the curse, so Regina put in a request to the various states to get your records unsealed.”

“Regina? _REGINA?!_ Regina ordered my sealed psychological records unsealed and sent to a town that doesn’t exist, all so you could have a better idea on how to treat me?” Emma all but shouted.

“The magic of the internet?” Archie offered with a weak smile.

“How could she violate my privacy that way? There are laws!” Emma was shaking in anger, rattling her handcuffs against the bed and ignoring how it made her wince in pain. Her eyes glazed over at the restraints, remembering.

One of her old foster fathers had a favorite way of keeping his kids in line: tying them to their beds or chairs and make them watch as he disciplined or molested another of the children. _“Now just watch what happens when you misbehave. I don’t like doing this but you don’t leave me any choice.”_ Some force, be it fate or a guardian angel had kept her from suffering directly at his hands, but she’d seen enough kids abused to have that memory burned into her mind with a white-hot poker.

She came out of the memory to the sound of Archie calling her name. “Emma?”

Shaking her head to clear the cobwebs of her past horrors, she slipped her mask in place. “Sorry, I got caught up in a memory there.”

“You were trembling so badly it rattled the handcuffs, which then bit into your wrists so badly you’re bleeding again,” he noted, distress coming to his voice as he pressed the call button for the nurse.

“No, really. I’m fine. You don’t have to do that,” she tried to protest, but it was too late. Two nurses entered, alerted to her distress. Emma refused to make eye contact or respond to their questions, instead pinning Archie to the wall with a death glare, only breaking her gaze once her bandages were changed.

To his credit, he observed the whole process without flinching. When the new bandages were applied, he coughed. “I’m sorry, but can I request that she get some kind of padding, even an extra layer of soft cloth, to protect her wrists?”

The nurse looked at him with a raised eyebrow but nodded when she saw that he was serious. After the kindness of his request, Emma let her gaze fall to her lap, unable to acknowledge her behavior.

When she had fresh dressings and the nurses had departed, she heard Archie clear his throat, the crinkling of the chair giving away that he had leaned forward. Awkwardness hung on every word when he spoke. “S-so, I couldn’t help but notice that the nurses are fairly well-practiced at changing those bandages.”

“I don’t like being restrained,” she muttered to the sheets in front of her, hating revealing even that much, but knowing that the psychiatrist was the one who could get her some freedom.

She heard him take a breath, digesting this new information. “Well, you really hurt yourself when you tried to escape. They had to in and operate on you again. Those are for your own good at this point,” he explained, trying to be as gentle as possible.

“Yeah, that’s what Whale said,” Emma grunted, “but he didn’t say how I could get out of them.”

Archie heaved a reluctant sigh. “When I’m satisfied that you’re not a threat to make another escape attempt or a danger to yourself, I can get them removed.”

“Really?” she asked, leaning up with interest for the first time since he’d arrived.

The psychiatrist pursed his lips. “It’s not an automatic guarantee, and it’s not going to happen soon, Emma. I need to know you’re going to be okay here. You were badly wounded, and even though you were asleep at the time, your body woke up to that trauma. You’re going to need to heal.”

She cut suspicious eyes back at him. “What do I need to do to make you sure I’ll be okay?”

“Talk to me. Let me help you work through the things that made you put yourself under that curse in the first place.”

Emma groaned.

“I know, I know,” Archie chuckled softly, “I know you hate opening up. It’s the underlying reason you’re here in the first place. But Emma, I’m not family. I’m not even someone you consider a close friend,” he waved her protest off before she was able to utter it, “And that’s one of the biggest reasons you’ll be able to trust me. I don’t have history with you. I don’t have pre-formed judgements. You’ll be able to talk to me without fear. My only goal is to help you.”

“I had a bad time with counselors in school,” she hazarded, knowing it wasn’t much to give up and would start to build the trust he needed. She had to get his approval to get out of the cuffs. “They were only interested in putting kids into their neat little boxes. Good student, trouble maker, stuff like that. Didn’t take them long to call me a problem and give up on me. After that it was just a basic few questions every time I got sent to them and they sent me right on back.”

“Well, I promise you that’s not how I treat my clients. My goal is only to help,” he promised.

It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before, but her lie detector wasn’t pinging. He meant it, at least, and that was enough for some of her ice to thaw, not that she intended to let him know that. The memories of too many who promised to help without any intention of following through were too vivid still. She grunted, waiting for him to ask her why she did what she did.

“I know you don’t like talking about things you’re thinking or feeling, so I’m only going to ask you one question today, Emma: what does happiness mean to you?” he asked in a soft voice.

Taken by surprise, she opened her mouth to retort when the full meaning of the question hit her. An unbidden memory swam to the front of her mind: Regina’s rant at the Rabbit Hole the night she got so drunk. _‘You may have been content, Emma Swan, but please don’t insult me by claiming that chasing bail jumpers and living hand-to-mouth all on your lonesome brought you any real happiness.’_

The Queen’s words had stung, but that didn’t make them any less true. She’d never been happy, at least not for more than a flash here or there. She’d striven for contentment, those brief periods in between heartache where she was able to rest. As a child that had meant a good book, a full meal, or a hideaway from the horrors of her foster parents and siblings. As an adult it meant many different things from a blanket on cold nights when she was living in the Bug to seeing food in her fridge, and having a hot mug of coffee on cold Boston mornings.

Now? Now she knew those fleeting moments for what they were – the contentment before the next heartbreak. Before the next round of emptiness came to claim her. Foster families that sent her back, Neal’s betrayal, gaining and then losing her parents, and most recently earning Regina’s hatred. She’d never been happy. Not in the ‘happily ever after’ or ‘happy ending’ ways her parents.

So engrossed with her thoughts was she that Emma failed to notice Archie leaving until the click of the door latch sounded. She looked over to find the source of the interruption to her reverie and saw the psychiatrist standing in the doorway. “It’s time for me to go, Emma. You have physical therapy next, and then your family will be by during visiting hours. I want you to think about that question for tomorrow: what does the word ‘happiness’ mean to you? I’ll be back here tomorrow morning, same time. You’re my 8 o’clock appointment for the foreseeable future.”

“Wait, Archie. You’re a shrink. You don’t have hours that early,” Emma protested.

“For you I do,” he smiled as he closed the door.

Silence descended upon the room once more as Emma tried to wrap her mind around that very large thought. For the first time in a very long time someone had gone out of their way to do something just for her. The last time she could think of something like that happening was when Mary Margaret bailed her out of jail, but that may have been more to do with her feelings toward the mayor and Regina’s trumped-up charges than anything else.

Everyone else always wanted something from her.

_“You’re going to come break the Curse and bring back the Happy Endings.”_

_“I thought the terms of our agreement were quite clear. You owe me a favor – you alone_. _”_

Everyone always wanted something, until now. Archie was getting up far earlier than he had to – as a person who loved her sleep, that fact alone was enough to convince Emma that he was serious about wanting to help her – to come into her hospital room and talk to a patient who he knew would be uncooperative. And he did it with a smile. Her anxiety level about being chained to the bed was much, much lower when he left than it had been when he was there.

The first cracks in the icy wall around her heart started to spread.

* * *

The next time the door opened, it was Whale with a large, surly-looking man in sweats following behind him. “I hear you’re fighting against your restraints. Miss Swan, I must reiterate to you that I set these measures for your own protection. If you’re struggling so much with the handcuffs that it’s making you bleed, you’re going to set your recovery back.”

She growled, unwilling to acknowledge the bastard.

“Fine, let me phrase it another way: do you WANT to stay in this hospital longer than you have to?” he asked, sliding onto the side of her bed.

That got her attention. She wanted out of the handcuffs, out of her bed, and out of the hospital as fast as possible. “No,” Emma admitted in a low voice, feeling the reluctance to admit anything the man said was right.

“Then be a good girl, lie there, and rest. Doctor Hopper is the only one who can sign off on getting your handcuffs removed. In the meantime, I’ll be monitoring your healing, and adjusting your medication levels considerably. We have you on a pretty strong antibiotic just in case of infection from either the Kris dagger or from the surgery. Then there’s a pain medication. I put you on oxycodone dose to keep the pain manageable…what’s wrong?”

Emma’s eyes shot open wide at the drug’s name. “I – ah – I can’t be on that drug. You have to give me something else.”

“Why? What’s wrong with that? It’s a standard pain medication after surgery,” he questioned, consulting her chart.

“I had a bad experience after my last surgery,” she admitted in a quiet voice, “the doctors kept me on it way too long and, well, let’s just say I don’t want to repeat the experience of getting off it, okay?”

Whale pursed his lips into a tight line, looking at her far more piercingly than she was comfortable with, but eventually he nodded. “Your records are almost impossible to trace, having lived so many places and under so many names. With Storybrooke being, well, Storybrooke, we can’t really get them delivered, so I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll make a note on your chart and get your medication switched immediately. Will Vicodin work?”

“Yeah, I’ve never had a problem with that stuff,” Emma nodded.

“Perfect. In the meantime, this large gentleman here is your physical therapist. Emma, meet Gus,” Whale gestured to the large man.

“Wait, Gus like the mouse from Cinderella Gus?” Emma asked eyes wide.

“Got a problem with that?” the large man-mouse rumbled.

“No, no. Not at all. I loved that movie,” she smiled.

“Movie fucked our story all up. Damn Disney. Anyway, yeah that’s me. Right now you can barely move here. You need the nurses to feed you, change your band aids, and help you take a crap. If you want to get your life back to normal, you need my help. A week in here and then a month outpatient physical therapy, with me making sure you’re doing your exercises every day and not straining your stomach, and you’ll be good to go. Got it?”

Almost snorting at his bluntness, Emma felt a surge of relief. Gus wasn’t a bullshitter; he was someone she could relate to. It would hurt, but she instantly trusted him. “I got it,” she promised.

“I’ll let you two get acquainted, then. Emma, your meds will be updated and changed right away. If you could stop making your wrists bleed, that would make everyone’s lives a lot easier, your own most of all,” Whale promised as he left.

Gus looked at her like she was a wheel of the sweetest Brie. “Let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Gus was someone else on the show - I took a little creative license here :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See chapter 1 for disclaimer

_The Red Army squared off against the Black Army. The ranks stared at each other, staggered in rows with gaps in between the rotund soldiers to allow for the enemy’s fire to fall harmlessly to the earth. With a mighty roar, they started charging, one at a time in an odd formation. When each soldier got to an enemy, they vaulted over them, collapsing the rank and taking their place. The Red General was the first to reach his opponent’s back. Crowing his victory, he shouted, “King me!”_

Emma blinked her eyes against the sudden infusion of light. Instead of being on an extremely strange battlefield, she was back in her hospital bed. Two voices were murmuring off to the side of the room where her table was. As she squinted, the tide of memories came back to her. Hospital. Injury. Doctors. Physical therapy. Her first session with Gus was harder than she’d expected, and at the end it was all she could do to stay awake when the nurses helped her back to her room. Being the Savior had its perks, loath though she was to admit it in most cases. In this instance she was only too happy to take advantage of the extra care most of the Storybrooke residents were to offer her aid.

She tried to get up, but her hands were restrained once more. Apparently her freedom only existed to allow her to get to and from therapy, and when she was on her own she was still to be chained. Lifting her head to see who the still-murmuring voices belonged to, she was surprised to see that Ruby and Granny were playing checkers in her room. That explained the dream. If there were two people in her room she’d expected – hoped – that it would be some combination of her parents and Henry.

“What’s going on?” she rasped, hating how rough and weak her voice sounded.

The two women looked over, distracted from their game. It might have been Emma’s imagination, but for gazes usually so warm, they were almost scowling.  

“Well, some dumbass tried to bust out of the hospital after having major surgery, so they needed a couple of guard dogs,” Ruby all but barked, “and that was after she cursed herself to sleep instead of talking about things with her friends.”

Shame flooded through Emma in a hot wave, ending in tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She cursed her out of control emotions, choosing to blame the medication. “I’m…I’m sorry I got you stuck with me,” She apologized, “You don’t have to babysit me. I’ll behave. I’m the only one who should pay for my actions.”

Granny snorted while Ruby rolled her eyes. “Not my orders, Princess. I’m told to watch to make sure you don’t slip out of here somehow. Your parents will switch off shifts in the afternoons and evenings. That way David and I can stagger shifts at the Sheriff’s department.”

Emma winced at the use of her title from a woman she’d considered a good friend. “It’s not enough, but I’m sorry, Ruby.”

“I’m the last one you need to apologize to, Princess. It’s not like I’m your best friend or anything. I didn’t even know anything was going on with you. It’s not like you could have come to me with anything that was going on. I’m just Ruby the waitress,” the brunette sniffed.

Emma tried shifting in her bed, attempting to get into a position where she could look at Ruby better, but the effort pulled at her sore muscles and incision, and she cried out at the stab of pain, grabbing at her wound.  

In a heartbeat Ruby was at her side, easing her back into a better resting position. “Hey, hey. Just relax. You’re not supposed to move around too much. The nurse told us when they checked you last.”

Tears were flowing down Emma’s cheeks. She hated being so vulnerable, but pain, shame, and the effect of the medication wore down her defenses. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting everyone down,” she sniffed at the simple act of being touched by another human being for the first time in more than half a year.

“Sh. It is okay, Emma,” the waitress soothed, “I know. I know things were hard, and we all let you down. I just wish you had come to me. I thought we were best friends. We all thought you’d killed yourself until Regina found you. We all had some hope then, but when you made it so hard to rescue you, it just made everything worse.”

Emma sniffed, running out of tears, but accepting her friend’s words.

“Your family has barely left your side ever since you got here. They’ve been taking shifts eating and sleeping at home and taking care of Neal. We’re only here now because you sent them home, and they wanted someone to make sure you stayed safe,” Ruby said, rubbing slow circles on her back. Emma leaned into the touch, resting her head on the other woman’s shoulder.

When Emma didn’t respond, Ruby moved to sit on the bed in front of Emma, one hip on and one leg supporting her on the floor. “Why? Why didn’t you come to me, Emma? I could have helped…I don’t know how but somehow!”

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Emma forced herself to look her friend in the eye. If she was ever going to start getting past what happened, she needed to face up to what she’d done. “I didn’t think anyone would care.”

Ruby stared at her, uncomprehending. “Are you serious? Why would we not care about you? You’re my best friend! You’ve been there for me when I needed you, why wouldn’t I do the same for you?”

Emma tried to twist her fingers together, only to be stopped with the metallic rattle of her handcuffs. “I hate these things so much,” she ground out, “I know I should have, but when I tried to get everyone together for my birthday, you were all busy. No one even called me about it.” Hating how small her voice sounded, Emma tried to meet Ruby’s eyes, but wasn’t brave enough.

“Your birthday? When?”

Ruby’s surprise was evident in her tone. Shaking her head, Emma explained. “When I came to the library that one night asking if you and Belle wanted to get together for a girls’ night, you said you were busy and never called me back.”

The waitress’s brows furrowed as she tried to place the memory, then as realization dawned her eyes grew large. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. I had no idea it was your birthday! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because it wasn’t just you and Belle. Elsa was busy looking for her sister, Regina hates me, my parents were wiped looking after Neal…everyone was busy.”

“But it was your birthday!” Ruby insisted, “It’s kind of a big deal, even without the whole curse-casting, curse-breaking thing. We would have changed our plans and hung out another time. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Emma looked down, unwilling to open herself up enough to answer the brunette’s question truthfully, especially with Granny listening. Damn werewolf hearing and all. She murmured to herself.

Ruby leaned forward. “What? I didn’t catch that.”

“I said because I’ve never had a birthday party before!” snapped Emma, annoyed that the shameful truth was out and relieved all at once. “None of my foster families ever had birthday parties or gave gifts to their kids. They used the government checks for booze or drugs and barely fed us as it was. Birthday parties were for kids with real families, not kids like me. You were busy, my parents were busy, Elsa was busy, Hook and Tink were getting busy, Henry went to live with Regina, and so I never saw him…it was just easier to do what I’ve always done. Put a candle on a cupcake and blow it out, then go to sleep.”

“Wait, wait, and wait. You think Regina hates you?” Ruby asked, goggling.  

“I don’t think it, I know it,” retorted Emma, “She told me so herself. Said I was a waste of space, that my parents had replaced me with someone normal, stuff like that. She almost hit me, too.”

“But that makes no sense! Why would she do those things if she…” Ruby trailed off as Granny gave a loud cough. “Ruby! Best not to talk about things that are none of your business. Why don’t you run along to the cafeteria and get some food while I have a chat with Emma?”

Ruby didn’t want to go, that much was abundantly clear, but she wouldn’t cross her grandmother, so she nodded and made her way out of the room, giving Emma’s hand a quick squeeze.

Granny slid a chair over next to Emma’s bed, grunting at the effort. She sat back down with a big sigh. “Now, listen up, Princess. I don’t often tell people what to do anymore, but in this case I’ll make an exception. You may have had an idea in your mind about how things were when you pulled your disappearing act, but you haven’t seen what’s happened since you’ve been gone. You need to find out the whole story.”

“The whole story?”

“Trust me, pup, you don’t know the half of what’s really at work here,” Granny grunted, refusing to say any more as she shuffled back to the table.

Emma watched as the matronly woman cleared away the checkers in preparation for Ruby’s return, her mind swirling with questions. She still couldn’t figure out why her parents were putting so much time and effort into her. Before she’d cursed herself it seemed like they couldn’t spare even a few minutes for her, and she’d been certain her mother blamed her for the light post hitting her father. And yet, here they were when she woke up…for the second time anyway.

Ruby’s guilt trip had been another revelation. She hadn’t realized that she meant as much as she did to the waitress, but the emotion in Ruby’s eyes had been plain and her lie detector hadn’t gone off.

She had been missed.

Coming hard on the heels of that realization was the echo of Granny’s words. There was far more that was going on than she was aware of, if the older woman was to be believed. Whatever the heck that meant.

The biggest question of all was the identity of her supposed True Love, the one who had kissed her awake. If it had been either of her parents or Henry, they wouldn’t have acted so strangely around her in the room.

So who the hell had woken her up?

Ruby came back into the room, carrying a bag that smelled like heaven. As she spread the meal she’d brought back for herself and Granny out on the table the noise of Emma’s stomach rumbled around the empty room. “I really wish I could eat real food, especially one of your grilled cheese sandwiches, Granny, but until I’m more healed my only food comes from this tube here,” she nodded at the IV drip, “not like I could feed myself anyway.”

“Well then I guess you’ve got no choice but to get better, then,” Ruby challenged, biting off a huge chunk of a greasy, dripping bacon-double cheeseburger.

“Make you a deal, Princess,” Granny said, grinning as she purposefully teased her with the title she hated, “If you get better and get those handcuffs off without running off or hurting yourself again, I’ll give you a free grilled cheese every day for a month at the diner.”

After such an emotional roller coaster of a morning, the relief sweeping through her was palpable. She gave a giddy, slightly watery smile to the two werewolves. “Deal. Ruby, can you call Archie and tell him that I promise to stay here and work on all parts of my recovery if he will sign off on getting the handcuffs removed?”

Ruby’s answering smile was a mixture of joy and confidence, already reaching for her phone. “I can do that, Emma.”

While she was speaking to the therapist, a nurse came in with a pillow, and gestured for Emma to sit up so she could replace the one she was currently using.

“A new pillow?” Emma asked, confused, “I didn’t think linens got changed until the morning.”

“This isn’t from the hospital,” the nurse answered, “This was just delivered with a special request that it be given to you to use.”

As she reclined once more, recognition dawned over Emma. “This is my pillow from home! Who brought this in?”

“They didn’t say. It was anonymous,” explained the nurse, who left the room without another word.

* * *

“Wait, I’m not sure I understand; what exactly do you mean when you say you don’t know what you’re going to do?” Archie asked as he looked over the upper frame of his wire-rimmed glasses at his current client.

Regina ran her hands through her hair, blowing out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know what I’m going to do! The last time Emma and I spoke face to face, I was berating her in public and almost slapping her. I can’t just stroll into her room and say, ‘Hi there. I almost knocked you into next Tuesday, but as it turns out, you’re my True Love and I just kissed you awake. Want to have my babies?’”

Archie chuckled. “No, that’s not what I meant. You could find a way to repair bridges first before jumping into the deep end.”

“I don’t even know where to begin. I said some horrible things to her, that she was a waste of time and space, and that no one would be sorry if she wasn’t there,” her voice choked up, “and that’s even before you take into account the fact that most of the bad things that happened to her from the moment she was born can be blamed on me.”

“Is that really the case, though?” Archie asked, scratching with his pencil.

Regina looked up at him. “I cast the curse that made her parents ship her off to Maine. I was the reason she grew up in the foster care system. I was the reason she suffered unspeakable horrors as a child, and grew up alone on the streets after she finally escaped.”

“I think I see what the issue really is here,” Archie declared, “You need to forgive yourself before you can open up to the idea of love.”

“Forgive myself? How can I possibly do that when I’m the root cause for everything she suffered?”

“Are you?”

“Am I what? The start of her horrible childhood? Of course I am! I just told you: it was my curse that made her grow up without her parents,” Regina huffed, flustered.

The therapist drew a careful breath. “You may be the reason she had to live without her parents, in this realm, but I would argue against the idea of you being the reason for all her sufferings. Every person that affected her life for the worse made their own decisions. She was in those situations, but all those foster parents and siblings made the choices they made without you standing over their shoulders and urging them on. You can’t be held accountable for all the bad things, Regina. Just as you can’t be credited for the good things either.”

“What if she never forgives me? What if this time I’ve finally gone too far?” asked Regina, hating how small her voice sounds.

Archie gave her an encouraging smile. “I don’t profess to know Emma as well as some, but I’ve never heard that she was that cold. I think if you make a real effort she’s the kind of person who will see that and react accordingly, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.”

Not knowing where he was going, Regina sat back in her chair, waiting for him to explain.

“You’ve had some troubles with arranged marriages and pixie-dust foretelling’s before, right?”

She nodded.

“Well, this could be seen as falling into the same vein; that it was the act of kissing Emma that showed you who your True Love was instead of you choosing to love them and going through the normal process. So, I would start by asking you: do you feel any physical attraction to her?”

Hoping her blush wasn’t as obvious as it felt, Regina ducked her head to regain her composure. “I don’t think anyone would argue that the woman is stunningly beautiful.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She heaved a sigh. “Yes, all right? Yes, I feel a strong attraction to her. I have since the moment we met, with her silken hair, those amazingly green eyes, and the smile that she only gets when she’s truly happy…being in Neverland with her was torture, when she…”

Archie’s cough cut her memory short. “I think I get the picture, Regina.”

“The point is that I am very much attracted to her,” the brunette explained.

“Now what about emotionally?”

Regina snorted. “That’s even easier. When she first got to Storybrooke I hated her. I was so sure she was going to try to take Henry away from me that I treated her like a threat and reacted like the Evil Queen.”

“That doesn’t sound like an emotional attachment,” observed the therapist, scratching notes in his book.

“I’m getting there,” she retorted, trying to keep her frustration from her tone, “Things started to change after Neverland. Before we had to go to that godforsaken rock, she was more like Henry’s older sister. Conspiring against the lone parental figure in his life. When we had to rescue him from that miserable island, she changed. She was more a mother than anything else. When she started to grow up, I started to learn what an amazing woman she really is. Emma is a resilient, confident, intelligent, woman who has been tempered like steel in the fires of a hard life. To have come through what she has and be as caring, as loving as she truly is says something amazing about her. Seeing how she accepted her destiny as the Savior, turned into a real mother to Henry; and is even now trying to be the best daughter she can to parents physically younger than she is…I’m just blown away by her.”

“Have you ever told her that?”

She ducked her head. “No. Most of the time I’ve tried to keep her at arm’s length at the very least. Cordial co-parents is about as good as I’ve ever allowed.”

“Why is that?”

“You’ve met my mother,” she snorted, “The woman literally ripped the heart out of my first love. Do you think she fostered the traits needed to be a warm, loving person? I destroy everything I touch. If something happened to Emma because I couldn’t take the chance on losing another person I cared about, especially after Robin…left.”

“Well, maybe now is the chance to change that,” noted the therapist, “maybe now that you know you share a connection that deep, that powerful, it can lead to more for you.”

“How would you suggest I go about doing that? Walk into her hospital room, declare my everlasting love, and kiss her senseless?”

“Well, anyone might enjoy someone professing their love, but I get the sense that the two of you have never been big on words. Maybe actions might have more of an impact. Baby steps, like just going into her room to ask how she’s doing, might have a he impact, especially if she’s never had many people show specific interest in her life.”

Regina blushed. “Well, I may or may not have already done something like that.”

“Oh?” Archie grinned at her demeanor.

“I sort of delivered her pillow to the hospital for them to give her instead of the bricks that most patients have to sleep on. I also have a spy on her staff. As soon as she’s cleared for solid foods, I will be teleporting my own cooking to be served to her instead of cafeteria food. She’s far too thin, but I know why she is. I’ll put some meat on her bones.”

“I think that’s a great step, Regina. When she’s better, then the two of you will get a chance to reconnect and rebuild those bridges.”

“More than you think, Doctor,” Regina answered, hesitant to reveal the real meaning behind her words but knowing that Archie could be trusted.

“Oh?”

“Snow, David and I have agreed that she’s going to do her recuperation at my house, and not the loft. With the baby still not sleeping through the night, she needs as much peace and quiet as she can get. So she’ll be at my house in the room she slept in under her curse. I’ve also arranged to work from home as much as possible until she’s at full strength so I can be there for whatever she may need.”

“Then just be patient. Rebuild your bridges and get back on solid footing before you make any True Love declarations, and I think,” Archie trailed off as his phone rang.

“Well, it looks like you’re going to have the chance faster than you thought. That was Ruby, saying that Emma’s agreed to stay put and work on getting better if I will allow the handcuffs to come off.”

Regina smiled, trying to find the strength to calm her suddenly racing heart.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than the others because I wanted to get something written for this; my wife was recently diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic lung cancer, and as she's in her early 30s and has never smoked in her life, we're pretty reeling. Life has taken precedence over fanfiction, but things are looking up. She was cleared for a new medicine that attacks the tumor on a genetic level that the doctors have had good success with so far, so hopefully it keeps working with her. I'll keep writing when I can, or when I need a bit of a mental break. Any thoughts, prayers, well-wishes, happy vibes, rabbits' feet, or any positive feelings you can send our way would be greatly appreciated!

* * *

When Ruby was done asking Archie to come sign off on her handcuff removal, Emma sat back and watched the two werewolves go to town on their dinner. She stifled a chuckle, figuring that eating as fast as they could was a dog thing that bled over into their human personalities.

Thinking of the waitress brought back the conversation they’d had just minutes before. Ruby’s rebuke was still ringing in her ears. She’d been unaware of how much she’d be missed when she made her plan. Apparently there was a lot of work ahead of her to rebuild her bridges, and with more than just Ruby, if her comments were anything to go by.

Her daytime nurse for the day, a perky redhead named Kristi, entered the room with her usual ear-to-ear smile. “Good afternoon, Emma! How are you feeling?”

Ruby looked on with surprise as Emma returned the smile, albeit more hesitantly. “I’m okay. The pain is a little better.”

“Good! That’s what we want to hear. I just want to take your vitals and then I’ll get out of your hair,” she answered, moving to check the various readouts on the machine hooked up to Emma.

The numbers seemed to satisfy the nurse, who flashed a confident smile and bounced out of the room, leaving the women to their previous activities. Emma watched the others eat their lunch, envious of their ability to do so and planning what her first meal would be when she was cleared for solid food.

Before long there was a knock at the door. Granny made her way to open the door as Ruby dropped her fries and moved to take a position between Emma and the door. When Archie poked his head in, they all relaxed. “Just me, Emma. I came by after Ruby called. Are you really ready for me to sign off on the removal of the restraints?”

Ruby and Granny took that opportunity to leave. The waitress threw a casual wave over her shoulder as she exited the room, which Emma tried to return, but the handcuffs blocked her. She looked at the therapist sitting next to her. “I’m ready. Ruby helped me realize a lot of things about the way I was thinking, and…it sucks. I know how my life has taught me to think and react to people close to me. The thing is that there’s a family here for me, and I have the chance to really make it work for once in my life. I want to take that chance and damn the consequences. They already proved it by waking me up, right?”

Archie looked supremely uncomfortable answering the question about who had woken her up, but shook it off. “I think that if you make the effort, you’d be surprised at what your family will show you,” he declared before reaching for his phone and calling Whale in to unlock her.

* * *

When Emma’s door next opened, her father came into the room. He’d said they would be back in the days to come after their first meeting when she woke up, but she’d been so emotional that the promise barely registered in her consciousness. Seeing him keep that promise, to choose to visit her again, fanned the flickering flame of her hope that this time would be different, but she knew there would be a lot of repair work to do to fix her relationship with both her parents.

Hesitant, David approached with care. “Hi,” he began, sitting down in the chair next to her bed.

“Hi,” Emma breathed, hoping her voice didn’t catch.

They sat there, letting the painfully awkward silence drag on for what seemed like ages. Emma was waiting for him to make the first move, to tell her how disappointed he was in her, how she’d let their entire family and the town of Storybrooke down by running away from her problems. She’d heard it all before.

Still the silence dragged. He seemed to be waiting for her to make the first move, and despite her resolution to let him scold her first, she was wavering. Eventually the feeling of being in the principal’s office got to be too much. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out.

“Why are you apologizing?” David asked, genuine confusion in his furrowed brows.

Off his look of surprise, she shrugged. “I’m sorry for causing everyone so much trouble,” casting her gaze down at her lap to avoid his eyes.

“Emma,” he protested, “You know we’d go to the ends of this realm or any other to keep our family safe. I just wish you felt like you could have talked to us. I know we have a bit of a unique parent-child relationship,” he gave a weak chuckle at her snort, “but you have to know that if things get that bleak we’re always here for you. We’re family, and you never turn your back on family.”

She looked up at the last statement, and instead of finding disappointment or condemnation, she found warmth and understanding. “You know, I always promised myself that after my drunk of a father died in a ditch that if I ever had a child I’d be a better father than he was. Then I had to learn that my parents had given away my twin brother to be someone else’s son. King George,” he grunted the hated ruler’s name, “and then when he died and I had to take his place, I had to face the truth that everything I thought I knew about parenting was a lie. How could I be a good parent when my own examples just gave their children away?”

Heart thudding at the pain in her father’s voice, Emma wanted to say something, anything to make it all right, but the words wouldn’t come. It was more than the fact that this was one of the first heart-to-heart talks she’d ever had with a father in her life; she just had no idea how to reach through his painful memories.

“And then I did the exact same thing,” he continued, voice thick with emotion, “I did the exact same thing. I broke that promise when we put you through the wardrobe all by yourself, not knowing what you’d find on the other side, just trusting in the kindness of whatever stranger would find you. Emma,” said her father, putting a hand on her knee, “I know I’ve made mistakes, but please don’t let there be a doubt in your mind that I haven’t loved you every moment of your life. There isn’t a day since I woke up and remembered who I was that I don’t regret what we chose to do.”

“Dad,” Emma rasped out, conscious of the tears threatening to overflow the banks of her eyelids and course down her face, but he shook his head and kept going.

“I want to think that with what we know now, there was no way Regina could have killed you. That’s what we were afraid of, you know, that she was going to kill you to defeat the prophecy. She’s been far too good of a mother to Henry to think that she would have ever killed a newborn baby.

“I don’t know how to be a father, especially after giving up that title when we sent you away. What I’ve been able to learn so far with your brother is that parenting is mostly trial and error, keep at it until you get it right,” here David took a deep breath, “so here’s me getting this right: I want to try again. I want to have the chance to be your dad. If you’re willing to have us for who we are, I want to take this chance to show you how important you are to us.”

It was too much. She couldn’t find the words to identify her own feelings, much less use them to respond to his confession. The pain of their actions was still too close to the surface, but it was being cooled with their actions since she’d woken up.

 When he looked up at her with eyes shining, she broke. “I will,” promised Emma, “I’ll try my best, too.” She folded her hands in her lap, an action that drew his attention.

“Your hands are free,” he said, inflection rising at the end to make the statement sound like a question.

She gave him a small smile. “Yeah. Archie was convinced I meant my promise to stay put and work things out.”

“What changed?”

Emma took a breath, working out how to phrase her thoughts. “Ruby and Granny were here when I woke up after PT this morning. I made a remark that Ruby didn’t like so she laid into me pretty well. I guess it put some things in perspective that I needed to hear, you know?”

“I’m really glad she helped you today, Emma,” David said with a look of pure relief. “I know there’s not really a guide for how to be a parent for the first time to a thirty-year old, but the most important thing is to make sure we put you first.”

Feeling a surge of warmth from her stomach to her heart, she nodded. “Well, no one ever has before, so I’ll be learning at the same time.”

They gave each other a half-grin, before the awkwardness set in once more. It was a more comfortable awkward than the first, but Emma still struggled to find something to say. Fortunately for her, David broke the silence.

“So, ah, as a starting point, I had the television on the other day. I know we’ve been awake in this world for a few years now, but there’s never been enough time to really get to know how this real operates. There was this athletic contest going on, with a bunch of guys in big armor running into each other, trying to knock another one carrying a ball to the ground,” when she looked at his face she saw a look of such pure excitement she had to chuckle, “and it was awesome! They called it…football? I was hoping you could teach me the rules sometime once you’re out of here?”

“I know it’s something of a rite of passage for a parent to teach their kids how sports are played here, but I never had a foster father who cared enough to spend the time with me, so maybe it’s appropriate that I get the chance to teach my own father about sports,” she said, the notion of having a father-daughter moment, with the promise of more on the horizon filling her with a warmth she’d never experienced.

“I’d love that,” David smiled at her, rising and leaning over hesitantly, offering opened arms for a hug like he wasn’t sure he’d be allowed.

Emma felt a suspicious watery sensation in her eyes as she held her arms wide, accepting the embrace. She’d been prepared for something a little too firm for her wounded muscles to take, but he was surprisingly gentle.

His quiet, “I love you so much, Emma,” broke the dam and sent the water of her tears flowing down her cheeks. When he sat back, there was a tell-tale gleam on his own face

“I love you too, Dad.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for disclaimer.

David stayed for about another hour, chatting with her about anything and everything that came to their minds. It was the most pleasant conversation Emma had ever had with a father figure, foster or real. She was already looking forward to Sunday afternoons on the couch at the loft watching football with him and planning when they could watch hockey over the end of the winter and baseball in the spring. When the conversation ran quiet he didn’t try to force further connections.

“Well, I guess I should get out of your hair and let you get some rest,” David said, clapping his hands on his knees.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I think so. You need some time to yourself, and I think this was a good start to getting back to normal,” he said, getting to his feet and patting her ankle.

“I thought you guys were going to take turns watching over me,” she reminded, with more bite in her tone than she’d intended.

It showed. With a guilty wince, David sat back. “Archie said you’ve committed to recovering, so we decided not to smother you the way we’d originally intended.”

“Oh,” Emma breathed, surprised.

“We’re still getting used to the idea of you being an adult, strange as it sounds. It’s hard to know how to react sometimes. We’ve made mistakes, but we learn from them and move on. Be patient with us, Emma,” he pleaded.

“David…Dad…this was nice. Thank you,” Emma responded with a shy smile. She hesitated, holding her arms out, feeling oddly like a toddler soliciting a hug.

David, of course, readily acquiesced. After a warm embrace, he let her sit back against her mattress. “Take care of yourself, kiddo. Get some rest, get better. The Sheriff’s station is getting a little lonely without you there.”

“I’ll do my best to get back as fast as I can,” Emma promised.

With a smile, he left her to her thoughts.

* * *

As it turned out, her own thoughts were a scary place to be. Every time she started to think about her life before the sleep, as Emma had begun thinking of the time, she began to feel a strong sensation of dread.

They were words she’d heard before. _Trust us. We’ll take care of you. You’re safe here._ Each and every time she’d heard them, the rug had been summarily yanked out from underneath her, sending her spiraling down once more. Finding the people who were her real biological parents and building a…something…with them had given her hope. Stupid, foolish, wonderful hope. Wandering around the Enchanted Forest gave her the chance to get to know her mother, and working too many late-night shifts together gave her the chance to know her father. She’d finally started to wonder if she could be happy for once, and then it all crashed down in the blink of an eye outside a gaping hole in the sheriff’s station wall.

The stakes were so much higher this time that having the already shaky footing she was on taken away would be a disaster. Still, there was Henry. He was her reason for staying the first time, and he would be the biggest part of her reasons for staying this time. Watching the way Regina parented their shared son showed her the kind of woman, the kind of mother she wanted to be.

There wasn’t going to be any more running away or putting herself under a sleeping curse. She had to resolve her issues like every other adult: facing them head on and dealing with them.

Starting with her family.

* * *

After a fitful nap – hospital beds were designed to make the patient easier to treat, not to give them any real rest – a soft knocking at the door drew Emma back to consciousness.

“Come in,” she called, lifting her head to look at the entrance.

A head of short brunette hair peeked around the frame. “Hi, Emma,” her mother greeted with a hesitant smile.

Taken by surprise at her newest visitor, Emma’s head snapped back down to her lap, unable to decide how to react. She twisted her fingers in her lap, trying to think of something to say to the woman next to her, but coming up empty. Every time she had a statement or a question in her head, the image of her mother’s face as she accused Emma of dropping a light post on her father on purpose swam before her eyes and the impulse died before it reached her lips.

Seemingly understanding her daughter’s thoughts, Snow made her way into the room and sat in the bedside chair. An awkward silence descended, with neither woman moving to break it. After a few uncomfortable moments, Snow shook her head and cleared her throat. “When I was pregnant with you, I had so many dreams. Dreams of raising my little girl to be the perfect princess. I thought about showing her how to dress, brush her hair properly, and how to walk with perfect posture. In my imagination we’d go for rides together to have picnics in the meadows, and when she grew old enough for her first ball I’d teach her all about boys and why they weren’t so yucky after all.”

She paused, collecting herself, oblivious to the lump growing in her daughter’s esophagus. “It was going to be the perfect life, watching her grow up and have a family of her own. Then the Curse came. After you broke it and our memories came back, I blamed Regina for a very long time for us not having that, but I was wrong. We could have kept you with us during the Curse. You would have been with us, at least. It was our decision to send you by yourself through the wardrobe that Geppetto made.”

The lump had moved up into her throat now, giving Emma an inordinate amount of trouble swallowing. She brushed away the idle thought that the nurses would have to come in if she ended up choking. First David and now Snow had come into her room and laid themselves bare, not begging for forgiveness but making the decision hers. Displaying their faults, owning their choices, and ready to forge new relationships with her.

“Mom,” she began, but Snow was still talking.

“When we sent you through the wardrobe alone, trusting that somehow you would find safety, we were doing what we thought would protect you at the time. When you lost control of your magic because of Ingrid, I had your baby brother with me, and I reacted to protect him. I don’t have magic. I’ve never understood it, so when it started flaring up, I wanted to protected him from it. I reacted horribly to you. I treated you so, so badly, Emma. I forgot that you’re my child too, and I needed to protect you. I failed, just like I failed you your entire life. I will never, ever forgive myself for that.”

It was what Emma had been wanting to hear ever since that fateful, terrible day. Her mother knew she’d made a mistake and was owning up to it. “Thank you,” she managed to choke out before reaching for her cup of ice water on the bedside table. Just out of her reach, she leaned too far to get it and pulled on her still-healing muscles. With a sharp cry, she fell back against her pillow.

In an instant Snow was up and at her side. “Sh. Relax, honey. I’ll help you. Just lay back,” she murmured as she handed over the water. “I know you want to do all these things for yourself, but until your wound heals, let other people take care of you for a change. Please?”

Exhausted from the continuous emotional onslaught at the same time as her body was trying to heal, Emma could do nothing but nod.

After making sure that the immediate pain had subsided and her daughter was one again resting comfortably, Snow sat back in her own chair. “Archie told me that I need to work on putting myself in your shoes, to remember what it was like to be a teenager without a mother.”

Emma’s eyebrows felt like they were in her hairline at the admission. “You’ve been seeing Archie?”

Snow nodded, giving a wry half-snort, half-chuckle in the process. “My only daughter felt so alone and threatened that her only way out was to put herself under a sleeping curse. Whatever I used to think of myself as a parent and a woman was so obviously wrong, I needed to talk to him about fixing whatever it was that I wasn’t doing right. You deserve that much from me,” she said with a look at her hands.

“He’s been helping me realize a lot of things, things that I didn’t notice at the time that were hurting you. We never got to watch you grow up the way we wanted, to love, teach, and nurture you the way parents should because of the choice we made, and because of that choice, you had to endure and survive a horrific childhood.”

“How – it wasn’t really that bad,” Emma deflected after almost slipping up and lowering her walls.

Snow shook her head and refused to let her off the hook. “Yes it was. I don’t know the details, but I saw enough.”

“What did you see? Emma asked, low voice betraying her fear.

“Regina was deeply affected by everything,” Snow answered, trying to evade.

 _“REGINA?”_ exploded Emma, sitting bolt upright in bed and ignoring the sharp reminder that sitting up wasn’t the best idea at that moment, “What the ever-loving hell does Regina have to do with anything?”

Snow blanched, but swallowed back a visible urge to word-vomit all over the moment. “With her extra knowledge of this realm, Regina helped us understand that your childhood in the foster care system in this world was far less than ideal.”

Narrowing her eyes, Emma tried to pin her mother with the same look that had frightened so many runners into giving up, but for once in her life Snow held.

“Listen, Emma: regardless of how we learned about your childhood, we did learn, and I’ve had to face the guilt that I was responsible for that,” she took a deep breath, “Earlier I said that I dreamed of the perfect life raising the perfect princess, and when the curse broke, my beautiful baby girl that I got to hold in my arms for five whole seconds was older than I was, with a son of her own, and I couldn’t get over losing that dream.

“It took me six months of weekly sessions with Archie to realize that despite living a life that no child should ever have to endure, you’ve grown and blossomed into the strongest person I’ve ever known. You had this horrible early life, but you’ve overcome it all. You’re warm, loving, caring, and protective of those you love. Honestly sometimes I look at how you parent Henry, how hard you fought a dragon and broke the Sleeping Curse to protect him, and it makes me feel inadequate as a mother, remembering my own choices.”

Throughout Snow’s declaration, Emma remained focused on her hands, twisting her fingers as her mother’s words burrowed through the wall around her heart and started to thaw the ice. Still Snow continued.

“I don’t know how to be a mother. Raising your brother is teaching me little by little, but every day I learn new things I never knew about children. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully make it up to you for sending you to this world all alone, and then for what happened when Ingrid was here. I do know that I want to try,” she looked up at Emma with watery brown eyes, “I want to try to show you how much I do love and cherish you, no matter the circumstances of our life.”

Never one to be accused of being a wordsmith, Emma had no answer to give her mother other than the same that she’d given her father: she raised her arms in a silent offer of a hug, one which Snow was only too happy to accept.

It was a start.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for disclaimer.

“What do you mean she’s ready to leave?” Regna blurted into the phone.

Viktor chuckled at her surprise. “You didn’t think she’d be in the hospital forever, did you? Despite everything else, she was in phenomenal shape before putting herself to sleep. Getting stabbed is no joke, but her body has healed itself beyond all my expectations. If nothing else sets her recovery back, she can be discharged tomorrow and continue her physical therapy on an outpatient basis.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

Regina heaved a sigh. “I wasn’t ready for this.”

“Well, then I suggest you get ready, because Emma will be out of the hospital in twenty-four hours,” Whale snarked before hanging up, reminding Regina that as professional as he could be regarding his patients, Whale was still a bit of a jackass to just about everyone else.

Her phone clattered down onto the kitchen counter with an echo that sounded around the empty room. Panic suffusing her entire being, Regina did the only thing she could think to do and teleported to the Charming‘s loft in a swirl of purple smoke.

* * *

It was a mark of how used to each other they’d grown that none of the three people around the table flinched when she appeared in their kitchen. Indeed, she even materialized directly above a chair, looking for all the world like she was just popping in for dinner.

“We need to talk,” she declared without any other preamble, looking Snow in the eye as the other woman cut up some chicken and peas for Neal.

With a sigh, Snow finished her task and put the plate in front of her son. “I suppose we do.”

“Emma will be discharged tomorrow. Have either of you explained what will happen to her when she is?”

David looked over. “No, we’ve been waiting for the right moment but every time we try to bring it up with her, she changes the subject.”

“She does that whenever I try to ask her about what she remembers,” Henry chimed in, wolfing down his own chicken.

“Chew and swallow before speaking, Henry,” Regina admonished, repeating a refrain from long years around a different table. He gave her a cheeky grin in response, knowing he was sharing the same memory.

“So how in the world am I supposed to talk to her? How do I answer the questions she’ll inevitably have when we drive past this loft?” Regina pleaded, gesturing around.

“You tell her the truth, Regina. You’re True Loves, after all. You should be able to be honest with each other. Tell her that she needs peace and quiet in order to rest enough for her recovery and that with Neal, she’s not likely to get any of that here,” David answered, “Whatever you do after that is up to you, but I think you’re going to need to put most of the effort into forging a new relationship. She’s got to be pretty skittish.”

Regina rolled her eyes. “I figured that much at least, shepherd. I just don’t know how to talk about the deeper aspects of our situation with her. We weren’t on good terms before she went to sleep.”

“Just be yourself. She’s not going anywhere,” Snow soothed, “as long as she feels safe.”

“As long as she feels safe,” repeated the older woman, “Great. I just need to figure out how to make her feel safe,” she mused, getting to her feet and walking around the small kitchen area. Looking up the stairs, she caught sight of the door leading to the room Emma shared with Henry for so long. The idea formed in her mind in less time than it took to dash back to the kitchen, kiss her son goodbye, and teleport herself back to the mansion.

* * *

The next day, Emma was resting her sore muscles after physical therapy and thinking about her life since she’d woken up in Storybrooke General Hospital. Instead of a 1980s-era hospital room (though the work Regina had done in getting upgraded equipment was paying off) her room had come to resemble a rain forest with all the arrangements of flowers, get-well wishes, edible arrangement baskets, and stuffed animals of all kinds sent from the townspeople.

Making her stay even stranger, once she’d been cleared for solid food she’d expected to have to choke down crappy chicken nuggets, pasta, and other similarly bland fare from the hospital cafeteria. The first night she’d prepared her stomach for one of the worst meals she’d ever had when the orderlies rolled in with a tray of covered food that smelled like it had been prepared in the kitchens of Mount Olympus itself. When the covers had been removed, she’d been treated to the best lasagna she’d had since the last time she’d been welcome at Regina’s house for dinner. The noises she’d made upon trying the food were enough to get the orderly to scurry out, face redder than his scrubs. She couldn’t bring herself to care enough about the potential embarrassment; so fast was she stuffing her face.

Ham and cheddar omelets had followed the lasagna, with hot paninis for lunch, and the best open-faced pot roast sandwich she’d ever had in her life. When she asked the nurses if this was how all the patients were fed, they just shook their heads and said that this was a special case where the food was delivered hot and fresh with orders that it was to be given to her directly.

She didn’t know what to make of it all, so rather than focus on whether the town wanted her to get better because she was the Sheriff or because she was Snow and Charming’s daughter, she instead thought about her life at the hospital.

For ten days, she’d had settled down into a comfortable routine. Sessions with Archie in the morning in her room led into afternoon physical therapy sessions with Gus. After the torture was over, she rested her body in the bed either watching TV or sitting and talking with whomever was babysitting her.

As Archie had predicted in one of their early sessions it became easier and easier to open up to her parents when she saw how committed they were to helping her recover, even though she stayed away from the topics that would truly lay bare all her faults and failings.

Likewise, they avoided the elephant in the room: why she had put herself to sleep. It was as if they were making a conscious effort to repair their friendship before they fixed their familial relationship. It made the healing easier.

Then there had been Henry. They picked up right where they left off, as if the kid was just keeping her company in the hospital after getting her appendix removed. He joked with her, told her stories of his latest adventures at school, and generally kept things light. She was never more grateful for the kid’s crazy perception than she was in those moments. There was enough baggage between her and her parents that he left the adults to handle all the crap while he got to have fun with her.

They’d hinted at her being able to go home sometime in the next few days, but for once Whale was being tight-lipped about the details. It was almost as if he didn’t want to get her hopes up in case something should come up to set her recovery back so she couldn’t go home.

Going home. The thought started a ball of dread growing low in her stomach. Snow had said that they’d had to let her apartment go while she was asleep, so her belongings, such as they were, were back at the loft. She’d still be on an island in the midst of a constant stream of chaos with her parents and…their baby. She still couldn’t say his name. Faced with so much motion and craziness, she would do the only thing she really could and withdraw into her thoughts. Her scary, scary, thoughts.

The last place she wanted to be was alone in a crowd with her thoughts.

In the midst of her concerns, the door opened and instead of Henry as she’d come to expect, she saw Whale enter her room. “Hi, Emma.”

“You’re not Henry,” she said, still stuck on that point.

“There’s that famous Charming wit,” Whale retorted, but the glint in his eye told her he was teasing, “Today is going to be a little bit different. We’re discharging you.”

Emma hoped her eyes didn’t look as wide as they felt. “You’re kicking me out?” she blurted.  

Whale shook his head, furrowing his brow slightly as he looked at her chart. “We’re not ‘kicking you out’; we need the bed space for people who really are sick. You’ve healed enough for us to send you home. You can take care of your physical therapy on an outpatient basis from here on.”

A streak of cold ran from her kidneys to the backs of her knees as the dread she felt start earlier grew at an alarming rate. “Home.”

“Home. With your parents or your apartment, or wherever,” he confirmed, looking even more confused, “Aren’t you excited? You were asleep for six months and now you get to spend some time with your family again.”

“Yeah, my family,” she said in a quiet voice, “So when does the party start?”

“Right now, ma!” Henry exulted as he bounced into her room. “We’re getting you out of here!”

A crowd followed. Now filling the small room were Henry and her parents along with Whale. David and Snow were beaming at her, but also sharing little looks between themselves that had her wondering what they were doing.

As much as she disliked the hospital bed and everything that came along with being in a hospital, she was dreading the idea of sleeping on a couch at the loft. Still, she figured that after everything she’d put her parents through ever since she’d used the Sleeping Curse on herself, she owed it to her parents to be the best daughter she could.

“Great,” she tried to exclaim, hoping the false enthusiasm was enough to convince them. “So when do we head back to the loft? I guess my old room is N – the baby’s now, so I’ll be on the couch?”

Snow and David shared a look. “No, not exactly,” the teacher responded.

Confused, Emma looked from one to the other waiting for some explanation. Her heart sank as the implications began to sink in – they didn’t have space for her in their lives. Despite all their warm words and promises, her parents weren’t going to follow through. “Well, I guess I can get a room at Granny’s or something. That’s what I did when I first got here during the Curse.”

Dead silence reigned for a heartbeat before Snow and David fell all over themselves trying to explain what they meant while Henry jumped up, trying to tell her how much they wanted her to be there, but his voice was lost to the ruckus spreading in the small room.

In the midst of the din, a voice sounded clear and strong. “What your mother means to say is that you’ll be coming to stay at my home, Ms. Swan.”

Emma turned and for the first time since the disaster at the Rabbit Hole she laid eyes on a strong, confident Regina Mills, heels click-clacking her way into the room.

* * *

After her entry into Emma’s room, David and Snow had made their excuses and took their leave. Henry followed them out, saying that he wanted the chance to get to play with his uncle.

Leaving them alone together for the first time in months.

She hadn’t said a word to Regina since her family members had left, refusing to even maintain eye contact. The idea of being a charity case gnawed at her, but in her condition, she was in no position to offer any arguments. She was literally homeless, and although it wasn’t the first time in her life she’d been that way, Emma was still feeling more pain than she’d admitted to the doctors or therapists.

After an uncomfortably long period of silence, her regular nurse Kristi came in with her discharge papers. Still she couldn’t bring herself to engage Regina in conversation.

She noticed the older woman taking notes during Kristi’s instructions on what to do and not do until she was fully healed. That was probably a good thing as Emma barely heard the words as she tried to digest everything that had happened that morning. When she moved to take her discharge paperwork from the nurse the other woman was quick to snatch them away, storing them for safekeeping in her purse.

“So, I guess I need to take care of the bill now, or something?” Emma asked the nurse.

“Oh no, Princess. That’s been taken care of already,” Kristi replied, brushing off the concern.

Emma pursed her lips, looking down at her hands again. “I guess I’ll make sure to thank my parents for that, then.”

Focused as she was on her lap, she completely missed the look Regina and the redhead shared.

Shortly thereafter, Regina had left the room, murmuring something about meeting them outside. Emma protested the wheelchair when she saw it arrive, but gave up the fight. Hospital rules were hospital rules.

* * *

“I appreciate that this is a bit uncomfortable for you, so I wanted you to know that my home is yours for however long you end up staying there,” Regina began, needing to say something to break the awkward silence in her Mercedes.

Emma took a chance to look at the Mayor when she wouldn’t be caught, noticing the lines around the woman’s eyes and cheekbones more prominent than she remembered. Something had happened while she’d been asleep and no one really told her what. Snow had hinted that Regina’s fight with Rumple was brutal, but her mother never went into detail on exactly what happened between the two. Whatever had happened while she was under the curse had obviously taken its toll on the brunette, who was even now putting herself out to house her while she recovered.

“Thanks,” she breathed, not having the words for all she wanted to say.

The rest of the ride passed in silence.

* * *

The feeling that her parents didn’t want her around during her recovery wouldn’t leave, no matter how hard she fought to clear her mind. Despite all their promises that they were going to be around to care for her, and rebuild their relationships, when it came time to take her in, they made excuses.

And here she was, going to live at the house of a woman whose last interactions with her were to call her a waste of space and almost physically strike her. A woman who was under no obligation to her was opening up her house.

Despite all the times she’d been over to the mansion for any number of reasons, Emma felt the building’s imposing presence grow with every inch they grew closer. Butterflies manifested in her stomach and started dancing around. Regina was going to a lot of trouble for her, so she had to be on her best behavior and not cause her host any trouble.

When she pulled up to the front entrance, Regina put the car in park and turned it off. Hands trembling ever so slightly, Emma mimicked her action of unbuckling her seatbelt and reaching for the door handle. “Wait, Emma! Don’t get out yet. I’m supposed to help you in and out of seats for a few days, remember?”

Waving her left hand, Emma leaned over and put most of her weight on her right arm as she opened the door. “I’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry about me. Been getting in and out of chairs my whole life.”

Even as she said it, her still-healing stomach muscles protested the strain. With pain shooting up and down her abdomen, Emma’s arm gave out and she crashed to the ground. Regina was by her side in an instant, rolling her over and lifting her baggy tee shirt to check her wound site while Emma moaned in pain.

“Damn it, Ms. Swan! Why couldn’t you listen to me for once in your life and just wait for me to help? You could have torn your muscles! You’re not ready to twist and bend like that yet! Weren’t you listening to the discharge instructions?” Regina berated, fear driving her anger as always. The idea of losing the blonde to something as foolish as a simple fall horrified her, and her need to protect was stronger then ever.

“Didn’t…think…it…would…be…a…big…deal…” Emma grunted around the pain.

“Don’t do anything. Just lean back against me and let me lift you,” Regina said, sliding her arm under Emma’s shoulders and lifting her to her feet as gently as she could. “It is a big deal. If you’re going to heal properly, you’re going to have to stop trying to do everything yourself.”

“Fine,” bit out Emma, still fighting off the waves of agony in her abdomen.

Regina took Emma’s left arm and guided it across her shoulders. “Lean on me,” she instructed as she threw open the front door with a wave of her magic. It was awkward supporting the weight of the taller woman, but somehow they managed to get into the mansion, up the foyer stairs and into the living room without more than a gasp here and there from Emma.

“Have a rest here on the sofa while I go get your stuff from the car. Here’s the remote,” Regina offered, handing the device over, “watch whatever you want. After I get cleaned up a bit, I’ll make some supper. Is there anything in particular you’re in the mood for?”

Emma offered a halfhearted shrug. “Whatever’s easiest for you.”

Regina furrowed her brows in confusion at Emma’s indifference, but shook it off and left the room.

When she came back from the car, Emma was seated on the sofa in exactly the same position she’d left her in, staring at a blank wall without moving a muscle. The only telltale that she was even alive was the soft rising and falling of her chest as she breathed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby steps. That's what matters, right? 
> 
> See Chapter 1 for disclaimer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, everyone! I hope you're all doing well. Apologies for the delay, life has been tumultuous, as my previous notes have indicated. We did get some good news on Mrs Lucky though!
> 
> We had to go to the ER over the weekend when she was having some intense chest pain and the oncologist on call told us it might be a blood clot. After an EKG and a chest CT that revealed no clot, the doctor told us that the radiologist compared this CT to the last one from November that started all of this, and after just a month on her medication, the primary tumor in her lung was noticeably smaller, eventually measuring it to be .2 CM smaller than it had been! So now it's all about keeping things moving the way they have been. She has another CT scheduled for later this month, so hopefully this trend continues.

As Regina watched, Emma’s gentle breathing gave way to a slight tremor that began in her shoulders and made its way down her arms and into her core. She started moving to offer comfort to the blonde when the sound of sniffles reached her ears.

“Emma? What’s wrong?” She asked the shaking woman, moving to sit on the couch. There wasn’t enough room to sit next to Emma without putting pressure on her wound, so she instead sat by the blonde’s feet.

What she saw sent a tremor of pain through her own heart. Emma’s eyes were screwed shut, but not tight enough to prevent the tears leaking out the sides and running down her face. “I’ll be good. Don’t send me back. I’ll be good,” she repeated over and over, hands clasped together in her lap so strongly all of her knuckles were white. The woman’s entire posture was so rigid it looked as if she might break a bone at any moment.

Wincing, Regina leaned forward and tried to untangle Emma’s fingers, hoping to soothe her muscles. Impossibly, the blonde gripped herself tighter, panting out her breath in between sobs. With her eyes still closed as tightly as they were, Regina began to realize that her friend was trapped in a flashback.

She reached out, trying to pry Emma’s fingers apart, but the blonde’s grip was so tight she couldn’t risk accidentally scratching her hands. Sitting back on her heels, Regina tried to figure out how to reach Emma enough to calm her down. The last time she was around someone who was awake but so mentally not present was Henry when he was a toddler throwing tantrums. Placing her hands on his forearms to restrain his flailing without trapping him and speaking in a steady, calm voice seemed to be what got through his mental fog then, so she reasoned that it might help his mother, too.

Slowly making her way into Emma’s personal space, Regina reached once more for her, but this time slipped her fingers around the forearms. Maintaining pressure, but not so much as to cause pain, she started repeating the blonde’s name over and over in a low, steady tone.

“Emma. Emma. Emma.”

As her mantra went on, her fingers started caressing the other woman’s arms in soothing circles, and after a few moments, Emma’s frantic tension ebbed. Her joints relaxed to the point where Regina was able to get her hands apart. Regina took Emma’s hands in her own and squeezed them gently. “Emma. Emma. Emma,” she continued calling.

Eventually the familiar green eyes that had been haunting Regina’s nights for the better part of a year opened once more. When they cleared, she smiled. “Hi. You were gone for a little bit.”

Emma flushed, ducking her head in apparent embarrassment. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“It’s not a problem. Want to tell me where you went?” Regina asked, trying to draw the other woman out of her shell.

“Not really. It was one of the worst foster homes I’d ever lived in,” deflected Emma.

Regina decided to allow Emma her privacy and dropped the questioning for the moment. The gentle puff of the blonde’s breath on her cheek told her they were too close for the moment. Standing up with a jerk, Regina cleared her throat. “So, we still need to figure out what we’re having for dinner.”

“What about Henry? Doesn’t he get a say in this?” Emma asked, daring to look around the room for their son.

“He absolutely would, were he here,” Regina answered with a hint of a smile, “but he’s staying at your parents’ for a week or so.”

“What?! Why? It’s not because of me, is it? I didn’t want to put anyone out when I got out of the hospital,” responded Emma, voice noticeably upset.

“You’re not,” soothed the older woman, sitting down once more at Emma’s feet, “You obviously weren’t listening to the nurse’s discharge instructions. The reason you’re here and not at the loft is because you need peace and quiet to focus on your recovery. There was no way you were going to get that with a teething baby in that open floor plan; so we all agreed that this house would be the best place for you to heal.

Henry’s at the loft for a few days to give you some time to get adjusted. You won’t be alone, though. I’ve arranged to work from here for the foreseeable future. If there’s a critical meeting that I need to handle face-to-face, I’ll go into Town Hall, but by and large the technology of this world allows for office work to be done from anywhere. I’ll be making sure you’re taken care of.”

The words seemed to swirl around in Emma’s mind as she considered it all. “Wait,” she protested, scooting back as far as she could into the cushion, “Is this some complicated revenge for Marian? You hate me, remember? Are you going to smother me in my sleep?”

Regina rolled her eyes “If I was going to kill you, I could just as easily have let Rumple stab you to death, or taken care of it in the hospital while you were as helpless as a baby. No, this isn’t any revenge plot, Ms. Swan. I don’t hate you,” she took a deep breath, “The truth is that I feel horrible for how I treated you back then. You made an innocent mistake, but you saved a woman’s life by doing so and removed at least one sin from my conscience. I should have been thanking you, and instead I turned back into my evil self. You may or may not believe me, but I am sorry for how I acted. I want to make up for it by helping your recovery along any way that I can.”

Emma still looked dubious, but she was able to say a very quiet ‘thank you’.

Taking the moment as completed, Regina nodded and stood once more. “Now, dinner takes time to prepare, so I will ask again: what would you like to eat this evening?”

“I can have anything?” Emma asked, looking up with hopeful, but disbelieving eyes.

Regina’s heart hurt at the idea that the simple act of making any meal the blonde wanted would be such a momentous thing to her, but after learning what she had of the other woman’s past, she resolved to change that attitude little by little. “Well, I can’t lay on a seven-course banquet in just a few hours but within reason, yes. You are my guest, so anything I can prepare this evening I will make it for you.”

Regina said ‘guest’ but Emma heard ‘burden’. “I don’t want to be any trouble. Whatever is easiest for you to make. Maybe your lasagna?” she asked.

“Lasagna it is,” the older woman answered with a smile.

* * *

The meal was a disaster.

Not the food; that was her usual stellar effort, Regina congratulated herself. The meal, the act of two people sitting down to break bread – though in this case the only bread product being broken was the noodles – was a complete failure.

She’d wracked her brains to come up with topics of conversation that wouldn’t set off a mine in the troubled ground between them, but those were few and far between.

Watching the blonde push a Caesar salad around her plate, Regina made her first effort. “I do enjoy a good Caesar salad, but in the summertime when my strawberries and blueberries are just ripe enough, there’s something amazing about a salad with ripe fruit, candied nuts, and a perfectly grilled chicken breast.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Emma muttered, “the foster parents never served anything like that, and afterwards I couldn’t really afford anything that fancy.”

“A salad was fancy?” Regina marveled.

“When the parents were using the government subsidy checks for their foster kids to finance their drug habit, yeah, salads were fancy. Most of the time when I grew up we lived on Ramen noodles and grilled cheese. White bread and American cheese slices were cheap,” shrugged the blonde again.

Regina’s jaw was hanging down somewhere around the table. “How did you survive childhood?”

“I got good at shoplifting. Plus most store workers aren’t going to bust a skinny little kid in ragged clothes.”

“Oh my God,” the brunette gasped, hand over her mouth. “How awful of a way to grow up.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, wait a minute. Whale said you were able to subpoena my medical records so he could treat me, and Archie said you were able to get at my school records. You had to have known that my life sucked before I got out of prison.”

Regina hoped her face wasn’t blushing as hard as she thought it was. “Hearing the extent of it first-hand is different than dry government reports, which we needed for Whale to know if there was anything in your history that would help them treat you when you were unconscious.”

“I’m not really okay with you being able to access so much information about my past,” Emma retorted, pushing her plate away and taking a sip of water. Wounds plus pain medication meant she had to abstain from alcohol.

The comment made Regina flash back to the night she used magic to look at Emma’s memories. “I won’t apologize for what we had to do for you. Getting you out was almost impossible. Waking you up was almost as bad,” she answered,

Emma’s brows furrowed. “How did you guys find me? I thought it would take months to even for anyone to find my hiding place.”

Clearing her throat, the brunette pushed her own salad around. “That was all Ruby and Henry. She could smell dirt and hay on the letter you sent to Doctor Hopper and he figured out that you were at the farm when you wrote it.”

“What a clever little monkey,” Emma said with a wry chuckle, “That’s definitely proof of nurture over nature. You did an amazing job with him.”

“You give yourself too little credit, dear,” Regina hoped her answering smile appeared sincere as she cleared the salad plates into the kitchen and pulled the lasagna out of the oven.

The blonde gave an inelegant snort. “Anyway, how did you guys end up getting me out of there? No one was giving any details.”

“Also our son,” answered Regina, hoping that Emma picked up on her pronoun as she cut and plated servings of her specialty, “None of my magic was even scratching your barrier. I spent weeks down in that basement while Snow and Charming kept the town running, but nothing did any good. You really must tell me what you did to make it so strong. I’ve never seen its like before.”

Emma shrugged. “I didn’t do anything in particular. Just got the thought in my head that I wanted to be safe and I cast a spell to keep everyone out and protect me.”

“Well it worked magnificently,” the older woman declared, sliding Emma’s dinner over. The way the other woman moaned as the aroma hit her nose sent a bolt of heat to the apex of her thighs and her mind to bad places. _Naughty Regina!_ She scolded herself. _It’s far too soon for those kinds of thoughts._ The visual image of Emma licking cheese and sauce from her fork didn’t exactly help her situation as she squirmed in her seat.

Her inner monologue prevented her from hearing Emma’s next question. When she realized that the blonde was looking at her with an expectant expression, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I was lost in my thoughts. What were you saying?” she asked, taking a bite of her lasagna to refocus on the present.

“I was asking who woke me up,” Emma declared.

It was only through sheer force of will that Regina didn’t need the Heimlich Maneuver in that moment, but the chunk of lasagna in her mouth tried its hardest to go down the wrong pipe. Emma looked on in concern as she started coughing for breath. Eventually pounding on her upper chest with her fist, she was able to get the food settled properly. “Excuse me,” she grated out after a large sip of the wine.

When she was more settled, Regina cleared her throat. Picking up her fork once more, she used the flat edge of the tines to cut another bite of lasagna as she deflected, staring at her food to focus her thoughts. “Your parents didn’t tell you who did it?”

Looking up, she saw Emma’s furrowed brow. “No, they didn’t. Every time I ask, people get real cagey and change the subject, like you just did. Why the hell won’t anyone tell me who my True Love is that got me out of the Sleeping Curse? Isn’t this the part where they show up and sweep me off my feet or some crap like that?”

Regina swallowed hard on her bite of food. “I think because we’re all worried about exactly why you were under that curse in the first place, and wanting you to be in your best shape before going down that road.”

“Humph,” Emma grunted, displeased with the half-answer, but when she resumed eating, her obvious pleasure at the food in front of her blunted any petulance. The rest of the meal passed in relative silence.

Afterward, Regina started to clear the table when Emma jumped up, almost suppressing the wince that came with the sudden movement. Almost.

The blonde shrugged it off and started stacking plates and collecting their flatware. “I’ll clear the table and do the dishes, Regina. It’s the least I could do after such an amazing meal.”

“Oh, no Ms. Swan. You shouldn’t be twisting and bending like that. I can handle my own dishes,” she jumped up in a quick protest.

Emma slid in front of her with stacks of plates. “I need to do something. Please, Regina?” she rasped.

The surprisingly pleading note in the younger woman’s voice took her by surprise. Making eye contact, the green orbs meeting her own gaze were almost liquid. Unable to phrase a proper reply, she nodded, a quick jerky motion, before fleeing the dining room to collect her own thoughts.

* * *

Sipping on a sweet dessert wine in the living room, Regina waited for her guest to rejoin her. Emma’s behavior after dinner was entirely unusual. She’d always been conscientious before, but the intensity of her desire to clean up was unexpected.

Her first thought was that it was related to her questions at dinner over the identity of the person who woke her. Emma wanted to know, as anyone would. Asking if the Charming’s had told her was a dodge – there was no way that the blonde would have agreed to stay with her at the mansion if she knew. Did she sense that it was Regina herself who did the awakening? It might explain her desire to do something in return for dinner, but it didn’t explain the intensity.

A quiet cough drew her out of her musings. “I finished loading the dishwasher. It was a little uncomfortable bending over but,” she hastened to continue when Regina got to her feet, “I managed it, and I’m not in any pain, promise.”

Pursing her lips, Regina acquiesced to the moment. Emma truly did not look to be in any distress, so she allowed herself to relax. “I’m sorry if it felt like I was smothering you. Living with Snow had to be bad enough. You’re a grown woman. Just please don’t tear your wound and die on my carpet, at least,” she added with a half-smirk.

“I’ll do my best,” Emma returned the snark.

“Be that as it may,” Regina returned, “I’ve seen you wincing all evening. I think it’s time for a pain pill and bed.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess,” Emma said, trying to stifle a yawn, “I guess I’m on the couch here?”

The brunette marveled at Emma’s lack of presumption. “In a house this large why in the world would I put you on the couch? That would be cruel. You’re in the guest room down the hall from mine. That way I’ll be able to hear if you fall out of bed and need help during the night.”

Rolling her eyes, Emma gestured for Regina to lead the way. “After you then, milady,”

Unable to suppress her inner devil, Regina couldn’t resist putting an extra sway into her hips knowing they would be right at Emma’s eye level on the stairs. If they were True Loves, it wouldn’t hurt to plant the suggestion in the blonde’s mind.

She threw open the door two down from her own and swept her arm up. “Your rooms, milady,” she sassed.

Unfortunately for her Emma’s shock killed any other reaction. “This – this is my stuff!” she exclaimed.

“Well of course it is. Who else would it belong to?”

Emma shook her head. “No, no. I mean this is MY stuff. My TV, my alarm clock, my paint scheme, my sheets, even my…my pillow that somehow beat me here from the hospital?” She marveled. “How did you do all of this? WHY did you do all of this?”

“It was nothing. I just thought you might be more comfortable recuperating here if you were in a more familiar setting. It was a simple spell to recreate the room you had at the loft,” Regina dismissed. From the look on Emma’s face she could tell it was a lot more than nothing to the younger woman.

“My parents foisted me off onto you, saddling you with an unwanted burden and houseguest, and you go to the trouble of making me a room? Copying my own room in your house?” Wide green eyes met suddenly shining round ones. “I’d have stayed in a single room at Granny’s and here you’ve given me my own room and bathroom in a mansion, cooked me a better meal than I can remember having, just because? No one has ever wanted to help me out if they didn’t have to, or didn’t get something out of it. I’m…I’m stunned. Thank you so much, Regina,” she breathed, drawing the older woman into a tentative hug. “I promise to be the best guest you’ve ever had. You won’t even know I’m here, and I’ll do my best not to bother you as much as possible.”

Rendered mute at the depth of Emma’s insecurities, Regina could only return the hug. “It’s the least I could do after everything. Your medications and toiletries are in the bathroom already, dear, and all your clothes are in the dresser. I’ll leave you to your routine.”

Without another word she extricated herself from the embrace and made her way into her own room, shutting the door and taking a deep, calming breath with her hand on her heart. Emma really believed she was so worthless that no one would ever bother going to the slightest bit of trouble to help her. Fixing her mess and helping raise Emma’s self-esteem to its proper level was going to be a much longer process than she’d expected.

She’d done the little things as Archie had suggested – taking care of Emma in the hospital with food and comforts and then providing her a home to recover in. Maybe after his session with the blonde in the morning she could have a word with him on how to start increasing her efforts.


	9. Therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for disclaimer. 
> 
> Thank you all for the kind words after my last chapter. it was much appreciated!

_Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep_

“Mghph,” Emma grunted as she threw her alarm clock across the room and burrowed deeper under her covers. Five o’clock in the morning was an ungodly hour to get up, but somehow that’s when she was supposed to wake for her morning exercises. Then it was on to Archie for therapy, and after that Gus for physical therapy.

It was going to suck.

“I anticipated that you’d have a rather difficult time waking up with your normal inclinations and the addition of a narcotic, so I came in here to wake you myself, Miss Swan,” Regina said, breezing into the room in a vision of charcoal and purple, bearing a steaming mug of coffee and wearing…

Emma stared at her, trying to figure out who this bundle of energy was. “Are those yoga pants and a sports bra?”

Looking herself up and down, the brunette met Emma’s gaze once more. “My own morning exercise routine. I had to do something to pass the mornings for eighteen years before Henry.”

She tried to form a reply. She really did, but a bead of sweat working its way down Regina’s neck and into cleavage that looked like it had been sculpted by Michelangelo himself rendered her incapable of human speech.

“Close your mouth, dear, you’ll catch flies,” Regina grinned over her shoulder as she sauntered out of the room.

The door closed to the sound of unintelligible curses. “That woman’s going to be the death of me,” Emma muttered as she leaned over for a deep gulp of the coffee.

* * *

“That doesn’t feel right,” Emma said to herself as she made her way into Archie’s office, leaving Regina in the waiting room.

“What doesn’t?” the therapist asked as she moved into his office.

She pointed back at the calendar on the wall. “The fact that it’s January. When I went to sleep, it was the middle of summer.”

“How is your recovery going?” Archie asked, making a note in his book as she sat down in the chair.

Whenever she’d pictured a therapist’s office, Emma had always imagined a couch like almost every television show depicted. Archie seemed to prefer a more face-to-face approach. “It’s…going, I guess. I haven’t torn out my stitches or ripped out my stomach so that’s going well.”

Archie chuckled. “As good as that is, I was speaking of your mental and emotional recovery. How have you been doing with re-integrating into your life. Putting oneself under a Sleeping Curse isn’t something most people happy with their lives would do. We need to help you come to terms with both what you did and why you did it.”

“Well, Ingrid was after me and Elsa for that whole Twisted Sister plan of hers and Gold wanted me for…what I guess now was to take my blood to get his Happy Endings, although the thought of Gold and any kind of a ‘happy ending’ makes me nauseous,” she quipped, hoping to deflect the question.

It didn’t happen. Archie gave her a wry chuckle as he wiped his glasses clean. “No, I know that was the excuse you gave in the letter that you sent me, but I was more curious about the real reasons you did what you did.”

“What – what do you mean?” she asked, feeling her face flush at his perception. “That was the real reason.”

“Your letter wasn’t just explaining what happened as a step in a battle plan, for lack of a better term,” he leaned forward, “there was real pain oozing out of every sentence. What really happened?”

Her mouth opened and closed several times without any sound emerging before Archie shook his head. “I can’t help you if you don’t try, Emma, and I want to help you. It may have been a long time ago, but I was at court when your mother was pregnant with you. I remember all the hopes and dreams they had for you, and I know how much it crushed them to send you alone into another realm. The fact that you went through what you did as a child and somehow grew into this strong, courageous woman is nothing short of incredible. I want to help, but I need you to want to be helped. Can you do that for me?”

She swallowed hard a couple times before leaning back in the comfortable chair and fixing her gaze on the ceiling tiles. It was easier than making eye contact. “Do you know who my favorite Disney character of all time is?”

Archie shook his head, perplexed at her seeming non-sequitur.

“It’s been on my mind ever since I started accepting that you all are characters I used to read in fairy tales and watch on VHS cartoons. Snow White, Jiminy Cricket, the Dwarves, Tinkerbell, and so on. I still haven’t met my favorite, though. Aladdin.”

He looked confused for a brief moment before understanding dawned in his eyes. “Why is Aladdin your favorite?” he still asked, wanting her to articulate it for herself.

This time it was her turn to chuckle, though the lump in her throat and the butterflies in her stomach made it difficult to speak. “Did you ever see the movie?” When he nodded, she plowed on. “That first song of his was what did it. When he sang that he was a street rat. I was, too.”

“Emma! You can’t think of yourself in those terms!” Archie protested, putting his notebook down.

She laughed, but the dry, mirthless sound died on the office’s faded wallpaper. “Why not? I was passed from home to home like an ugly sweater. Every time I went to a new family I hoped and prayed that they would be the ones to keep me. The ones that would love me forever. But it never happened. It was never enough. I was never enough. Eventually it just got easier to push them away first. Eventually I got to a place where I was pretty good on my own but then…”

“Then Henry brought you to Storybrooke,” the therapist acknowledged, remembering the evening he met the blonde.

“And then it was mostly fighting someone I thought was a bad mother at first but who was just protecting her son,” Emma nodded, “but who ended up turning out to be the kind of mother I wished I’d had as a kid.”

He remained quiet after that admission, knowing she needed a minute to gather her thoughts.

“Can you even imagine how messed up I was after first meeting my biological parents and then learning that they were the same characters from freaking fairy tales and Disney movies?” Emma bit out.

The scratching of Archie’s pen was her only answer for a moment before he took a breath. “Yes, but it had to have been a nice change to find your real parents and learn they were looking for you, wasn’t it?”

Emma leaned forward and put her head in her hands, running her fingers through her hair with a frustrated huff. Opening up to a therapist for the first time in years was more difficult than she’d expected, even if it was necessary. Her promise to Ruby, reiterated to her mother and father “It was, at first. I had to learn how to be a mother at the same time I was learning how to be a daughter…not easy at all. It was good for a couple years, even. But then Ingrid came to town.”

“Ah yes, the Snow Queen,” Archie nodded.

“And my former foster mother, yeah. I thought she would be the one to adopt me, but she ended up pushing me in front of a car, saying my magic could stop it. At the time I thought she was nuts,” Emma gave a humorless chuckle, “I guess she was serious. Then my magic went screwy and I hurt my father and scared my mother, brought back Regina’s True Love’s wife from the dead, and generally fucked everything up. The only thing I did right was put myself to sleep so that Ingrid and Gold couldn’t get me.”

Archie gave her a concerned glance before returning his gaze to his notes. “Do you really believe out of all that that putting yourself under a Sleeping Curse within a barrier spell at a hidden location was the right thing to do?”

“Sometimes it feels that way, Archie,” Emma’s voice was small, barely audible even in the small office. She hoped it was quiet enough to hide the wavering that accompanied the tears she was fighting back, “everyone hated me then. Regina almost slapped me, Henry moved back to her house, my mother protected a baby from me and then accused me of hurting my father on purpose…everything was spiraling out of control. When it all went down, it just felt like I was losing another family, being sent back for not being good enough again. Only this time I wasn’t good enough for my own family.

“That’s why I did what I did,” she finished.

More pen scratches filled the silence as Emma tried to calm her racing nerves after her confession. “That’s certainly a lot to pile on at once,” he observed.

“Yes! That’s exactly what it felt like. Eventually I just felt like I was being buried, and when I couldn’t even get anyone to go out for drinks on my birthday. Not Ruby or Belle, not my mom, not even Re…,” she trailed off, not comfortable enough to reveal who she’d really wanted to spend the evening with. “Then it was like I wasn’t good enough for my friends. Not important enough for them to spare one evening for me even on my birthday. And it’s not like my birthday is a date this town can forget easily with the Dark Curse and all.” Her emotions were threatening to overwhelm her, consume her, and drown her in their tide. Only the use of the last elements of her strength kept her from breaking down.

“And now I’m recovering from a stabbing, barely able to care for myself, pushed off on Regina like a stray puppy while people look for the real owner, except no one’s out there looking to bring me home. Regina just has to put up with me.” Emma coughed, trying to control her emotions as she verbalized each and every doubt that had been swirling around the inside of her mind for months.

“Do you know that for sure? Did anyone tell you that your parents were forcing you on Regina?” he challenged.

She swallowed deeply, forcing the lump in her throat down. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense. I mean, yeah, she sat down and apologized for how she reacted after I got back from the past with Marian, but I still just can’t believe I’m on her list of favorite people in the world. My parents still need time with their new baby more than they need it with me, so they asked Regina to take me in.”

Archie opened and closed his mouth a couple times as if he were trying to say something, but couldn’t figure out how to enunciate the words. “Maybe you should start asking more questions from everyone to get the real story.” Glancing at his desk clock, Archie cleared his throat. “Well, we’re just about done for today. I hope opening up wasn’t too bad?”

Chuckling, she brushed her hands across suspiciously damp cheeks. “Not as bad as I was expecting. You’re different than I’m used to counselors being. You’re not trying to pigeonhole me into one specific role.”

“My only goal is to help you, Emma,” he reiterated, “You’ve done so much for everyone in this town that I would count it an honor to be able to repay that, even a little bit.”

“I’ll do my best to keep opening up, even if it takes a while,” she promised, getting to her feet with his last instructions still ringing in her mind – ask questions for the whole story.

Archie stopped her with a raised hand. “That’s not totally everything. I have something for you to do tonight.”

“Homework? You’re giving me homework?” she blurted.

“Don’t think of it as homework. Think more of it as a way for you to keep working on making improvements in your life when you’re at home,” he offered.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Emma, sitting back in her chair with a great deal of unease at the idea of being unable to escape her demons even at ho – at Regina’s house.

Archie took a breath before looking over at her. “I want you to start thinking about and writing down ideas for what you think you’d need to be happy. Not content, not surviving, but happy, where you are genuinely excited to get up in the morning. Try to come up with a list of conditions that would have to be met for you to feel that way. When we meet tomorrow, we’ll discuss what’s there.”

“So I have to come up with things that would make me happy in life? Anything at all? You’re not being real specific there, doc,” she drawled, getting to her feet once more.

“Just remember that it has to be a list of things that would make you truly happy, joyful to begin your day, not just content that things aren’t falling apart,” he warned on her way out.

“Yeah, yeah. I got it,” she retorted, mentally filing away another pointless busywork assignment from a counselor. When she opened the door, however, a voice in the waiting room arrested her progress.

“I don’t care! She’s not ready for that kind of activity and I won’t have Emma risking her fragile recovery on what is in all likelihood a wild-goose chase!”

From her vantage point she could see Regina’s back as the woman argued with an unseen person on the other end of her phone. The brunette’s shoulders were taut with tension as she argued, and at one point she ran a frustrated hand through her hair. “Well until she’s fully healed she’s my responsibility and I say she’s not ready for that. Just yesterday she almost fell down getting out of a chair!”

Shame coursed hot through the blonde, but she didn’t have time to dwell on the feeling. Regina was ending the call and turning towards her. Emma closed the door as quickly as she could, then re-opened it and looked for Regina. “So, ready to go?”

* * *

The car ride was silent. Emma figured her overly emotional conversation with Archie was making her less ready to talk, but the comments she heard from Regina’s side made her wary of engaging the other woman. Still, Regina had apologized, something she’d almost never done in the past, and seemed sincere about forging a new friendship, if the recreation of her bedroom and semi-permanent telecommuting were anything to go on. Regina had sounded as if she was defending and protecting her. Emma knew she was still healing, but the need to protest anyone trying to take care of her was still strong.

For her part, Regina’s uncertainty over Emma’s emotional state after her session with Archie kept her quiet. She was deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing and pushing the blonde back into her shell after everything they’d been through.

“So,” Emma broke the silence after clearing her throat, deciding to test the waters, “Archie said that I should start talking to the people closest to me about what happened while I was asleep.”

Regina’s head jerked. It was slight, but enough that Emma noticed out of the corner of her eye. “Is that something I shouldn’t ask you about? I know I have a lot to apologize for to you most of all, but he seemed to think that I might learn something about that time.”

When the brunette responded, her voice sounded strangled, as if she were trying to speak around a grapefruit in her throat. “If you want to know that, you certainly have the right to ask.”

“I don’t want to have the right to ask, Regina. I want us to be able to have a civil conversation about crap that makes us uncomfortable. I know I fucked up, and I know you guys had to deal with it. I just want to know how and why,” Emma retorted.

“You’re right. We’ll have that talk tonight. That’s an after-dinner conversation, I think.” Regina answered.

She huffed, but gave in. “When I was coming out of Archie’s office, I heard a lot of loud voices. Was everything okay?” Emma asked, pressing her luck but wanting to see if their newfound rapport stretched that far.

Regina laughed, before turning to look at her. “That was Maleficent,” she declared.

“Maleficent’s alive?” Emma choked out.

“And she wants to speak with you.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around again! 
> 
> Mrs Lucky got some more good news this week: at her regularly scheduled CT scan, the main tumor had shrunk another .2 CM and the other minor ones were barely noticeable. We still have a long way to go, but things are definitely headed in the right direction.

“Okay... The insanely powerful magic user who can change into a gigantic dragon at will _who I killed_ is now somehow alive again and wants to speak with me. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this, can it? What’s the worst she could do? Eat me?” Emma murmured to herself, pacing back and forth across Regina’s living room.

The older woman rolled her eyes. “You’re being overly dramatic,” Regina informed her, “Maleficent doesn’t want to eat you. She doesn’t even want to kill you. I don’t think so, anyway. She just wants to talk to you specifically about something that only you can handle.”

“Only me? What does that even mean?” Emma worried as she ran her fingers through her hair.

Regina sighed. “I guess that since you’re the only one other than Henry who has lived in this world her whole life, it would involve something outside Storybrooke.”

“Oh crap. That could be anything,” groaned the blonde, flopping down on the sofa with only a small hiss at the discomfort. “Oh, wait. We were supposed to talk about what happened while I was asleep.”

Before Regina could say anything else, the doorbell rang. “Why don’t we save that for after whatever Mal wants with you?” she suggested, getting to her feet.

Emma got to her own feet, butterflies dancing in her stomach. It should have been an obvious thought, but her mind was fixated on the fact that she had never met anyone that she’d killed before.

Regina opened the door to reveal a woman in a smart grey business suit, complete with a matching grey tie and black blouse. The entire outfit evoked memories of a dark, rocky cavern lit mostly by dragon’s fire. What struck her most though were Maleficent’s eyes. They flared bright and blue as the older woman strode into Regina’s home, pinning her to the wall with their intensity.

“Ma – Ma – Maleficent?” Emma stammered.

“Well, now that she’s proven her genetic heritage, we can get started,” Maleficent snorted.

Leading the way to the study, Regina gave a reassuring squeeze to Emma’s forearm. “Let’s move into my study and have a drink.”

When they were settled on two couches facing each other across a coffee table with a roaring fire courtesy of one of Regina’s fireballs, Maleficent broke the ice.

“As much as it galls me to share a drink with someone who once threw a glorified knife through my guts, I have a way for you to make it up to me,” she began after taking a sip of the tart beverage, “I have been informed that my daughter is alive and is in this world, but for reasons better left unexplored right now, I can’t leave this town. You’re supposedly good at finding people. I will forget that you tried to kill me if you can find her and bring her back.”

“You had a daughter? Who’s here in this world? And you need me to find her?” Emma repeated, hoping the surrealism of the moment hadn’t affected her sanity.

“You can ask your parents for more details, but yes, that’s the situation,” Maleficent drawled before taking a long pull from her pint glass.

“And if I find her and bring her back? Then what happens?” Emma wondered, sipping form her own water glass and silently cursing her pain medication.

The older blonde regarded her steadily over the rim of her glass. “I won’t kill you for trying to kill me,” she rumbled.

“Okay, Mal. Just drop that,” Regina interjected into the tension, “there was a whole lot more at play than any of us knew at the time. Everything that happened between you and I, between Emma and yourself, was orchestrated by someone else.”

“Who in the world could possibly have…Rumplestiltskin. Of course he had something to do with it. Okay, tell me what he wanted by having her father hide something in my head – giving me a headache for all the decades you trapped me as a dragon in that cave by the way – and sending her in to kill me to get it.”

Emma glanced at Regina for guidance, but receiving none she took a deep breath and plowed ahead. “Rumplestiltskin had a son long ago who fled to a realm without magic, and naturally the Dark One was too chicken shit to follow, but after losing his son he tried to find him for decades, and created the Dark Curse to come to this realm when he figured out that was where Baelfire had gone.

“He manipulated Regina into being the Evil Queen, started the feud between her and my parents, had her lose so she thought her only way out was to cast the Dark Curse, and somehow bottled the essence of True Love. He manipulated my father into sticking it in an egg into your head. He arranged it so that Regina adopted my son, knowing that he would eventually find me and bring me here. When I came to break the Curse, he had me retrieve the True Love essence to let magic loose in Storybrooke so that Regina couldn’t come after him. He left to find his son, who just so happened to be the bastard who left me pregnant in prison for his crimes.

“So, Rumplestiltskin is my son’s grandfather, and was the controlling hand behind all this crap,” Emma summarized, taking a deep drink from her water after her soliloquy.

Maleficent’s jaw descended slowly down during Emma’s speech. When silence fell again around the room, she closed her mouth, shook her head, and grimaced. “Bastard. I should have known. Where is he now?”

Regina cleared her throat. “I can answer that. When the pulse of True Love’s kiss that woke her up, it removed the taint from the ink that the Dark One needed. Without his happy endings, he kind of…lost his mind.”

“Lost his mind,” repeated Maleficent, dubiousness dripping from her tone.

Leaning forward Regina regarded her oldest friend with a conspiratorial smirk. “By the end he was so crazy he went around changing the colors of random plants and prank calling Granny’s.”

Emma took up the story. “So, the dwarves shoved him into a purpose-carved prison in the mines below town, and the fairies enchanted the bars to be sure he couldn’t escape.”

Maleficent sat back and digested the information she’d been given. Not having the Dark One around would certainly make life a lot easier, if the Saviour came through for her. “So essentially, we have a clear field from any real threats.”

“Basically,” Regina confirmed.

Turning to face Emma, Maleficent looked her directly in the eye and reiterated her request. “I need your help finding my daughter in this world. All I know is her name and where she was adopted. I’ll forget you throwing that knife through me if you can bring her back here so she and I can reconnect.”

“Whoa, Maleficent. She’s recovering from a stabbing of her own. There’s no way she’s in shape to make that kind of a trip,” Regina protested, moving her hands from side to side in front of her.

Mouth open to answer Maleficent, Emma turned to Regina. The amount of times that someone had defended her with that knee-jerk of a reaction could be counted on one hand with multiple fingers left over. “I can handle a car ride, but if she resists at all, I can’t exactly bring her in like I used to chase down the runners.”

“No problem,” the older blonde demurred. “Regina can go with you.”

“Into a world without magic? How exactly would I be of any use to Emma?”

Maleficent gave a dry chuckle. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Before Regina could rise to the bait, Emma interjected. “Can you give me any more information about your daughter or her possible location?”

The dragon drained her cider glass and put it down with an emphatic _clink_. “All the vision that the Dark One showed me was that the family who adopted her named her Lillian and they lived in some place called Minnesota.”

Regina’s head snapped around like it was on a coiled spring at Emma’s gasp. “No. It can’t be her,” the blond breathed, eyes wide as dinner plates. If it was at all possible she was paler than Regina had ever seen her outside the hospital when she had been exsanguinating at an impossible rate.

“You know this woman?” Regina asked.

To the surprise of the older two women, Emma started laughing. “Storybrooke and all its magical fuckery shouldn’t be able to surprise me anymore. It should be impossible, but I know it isn’t. It has to be her.”

“Who?” pressed the brunette?

“It has to be Lily.”

* * *

“Who exactly was this woman to you again?”

Regina’s suspicious question reverberated around the inside of the spacious late-80s luxury car. Emma shot her a look but Regina was able to use the excuse of driving to avoid making eye contact and revealing too much of her inner thoughts to the startlingly perceptive woman. A simple locator spell with Rumple’s enchanted globe pinpointed her location to Boston. After that it was merely a matter of Emma’s phenomenal skill at using the Internet to track down her exact location. They’d spent a late night discussing the ins and outs of Lily having almost stalked Emma around the country – and hadn’t that little revelation done funny things to Regina’s stomach? – along with what it meant for where she was now, given Henry tracking down Emma herself in Boston.

The next morning found them having an impromptu road trip in Regina’s aging Mercedes. Emma had grumped about simply being along for the ride, but she had to admit she wasn’t up to shape for driving long distances yet. Henry was safe with his grandparents for a few days and she had uninterrupted hours in the car with her True Love to begin rebuilding bridges.

They’d had to call Archie to cancel Emma’s sessions for a few days, but the therapist had been surprisingly amenable to the change when Emma said she was tracking down her childhood best friend and in the process fulfilling an agreement with Maleficent. He had made her promise to work on her homework in the meantime, but had no real problem with them leaving.

A snort from the passenger’s seat drew her attention back to her companion. “The better question would be: ‘what wasn’t she?’”

“Okay then. What wasn’t she to you?” retorted Regina, trying to keep her burning curiosity from her question.

Emma took a deep breath, keeping her wince under control when her inhalation stretched her stomach skin just a bit too far. “There was nothing she wasn’t to me. The first and only friend I ever had as a kid, so I guess you could call her my best friend, but most of the time it felt like we were sisters.

“I met her in Minnesota, when I was living at Ingrid’s house. I guess that part of America was most like Arendelle, or something. She was just always there, and eventually we got to talking and bonded over being orphans. Things were great, you know? I loved her.

 “And then,” Emma’s voice cracked a tiny bit as she paused to take a breath, “and then she betrayed me. She was pretending to be an orphan, and came up with the great idea to scam off some rich people by breaking into their lake house during the off season.

“Turns out it was her parents’ house while they were away for the weekend. I got blamed and my foster family didn’t want to deal with a problem child. I’d had enough of a history by then that they sent me back. Didn’t even wait for the social worker, either. They gave me exact change for the bus fare and dumped me at the nearest stop.”

“Oh, my God,” answered the brunette, shaken at such callousness.

Snorting, Emma continued. “Story of my life. Anyway, that’s Lily. Former best friend, almost sister, who got me kicked out of my last chance to get a family. I ran away from the group home I got sent to after that and after being homeless for a couple years, I ran into Neal and the rest is history.”

“Wow. And now you get to go meet her again.”

The blonde gave her another sideways glance as she shifted in her seat, trying to find an angle to sit that didn’t put undue pressure on her wound.

“The recline button is on the right, down by the floor,” she reminded Emma.

With a grunt, the seat jerked back. The blonde hissed in pain at the sudden change, but settled back into the comfortable seat. “I’m really sorry you have to put up with me, Regina. Maybe I could look around to hire a nurse to take care of me in an apartment or something.”

Regina goggled at her, taking her eyes off the road for the briefest moment. “Are you being remotely serious?”

“What? Look, you apologized for how you reacted when I brought Marian back, and that’s wonderful, but I still don’t know why you’re taking such amazing care of me. I don’t know how my parents were able to foist me off on you, but you’re going to way too much trouble for me. I never wanted to be a burden to anyone, least of all you.”

Regina’s first reaction was disbelief that Emma could be so ungrateful, but the more she thought about the other woman’s words and what she knew of her past, the more it made sense. She wasn’t used to being taken care of; she’d never had anyone to look after her, and with what happened to her to drive her to the cursed sleep she was even surer in her belief that no one actually wanted to spend time around her.

“I apologize for what I said, or rather how I said it,” the older woman sighed, “You are not a burden to me. What we went through all those months you were asleep made me realise a lot of things. Chief among them was how much a part of my life you’ve become. After Neverland, we became friends. I was starting to think you were the best friend I’d ever had. At least since Daniel. When I treated you the way I did, it was one of the worst mistakes I’d ever made.

“You’re not a burden, Emma. Not in the least. Taking care of you while you heal is the smallest way I can start making it up to you for how I acted,” finished Regina, chancing another look at her traveling companion.

Waiting until Regina looked back to the road, Emma surreptitiously wiped the moisture from her cheeks. “You still haven’t told me who woke me up.”

“It’s a long story,” Regina attempted to demur.

“Still have a ways to go before we get to Boston,” Emma pointed out.

Sighing, Regina resigned herself to her fate. “Henry figured out where you were and how to get you out, like I said before.”

“I remember falling asleep in Zelena’s basement and then waking up in the hospital,” reminded the blonde, “nothing in between. I always thought after reading all our stories and seeing a few people wake up from the Sleeping Curse that if you ever figured out how to wake me up I would see who did it. Figured it would be my parents or Henry, you know?”

“They tried, believe me. They all tried, many times.”

“So how did you all figure out how to wake me up?” Emma asked her question with more than a little hesitation.

Not for the first time was Regina grateful that she had to keep her eyes on the highway. “Well, your mother…”

A muffled groan came from under the mass of blonde to Regina’s right. “Oh, God. I can just imagine she had some kind of Bachelorette-esque contest.”

“You’re not far off,” allowed Regina, chuckling at the blonde’s increased groans. “Don’t worry, I didn’t let her set up the kissing booth that she had in mind.”

“Of course she did. Thank you for stopping her. If my parents and Henry didn’t wake me up…was it Hook?”

“Perish the thought!” protested the driver with a smirk.

“So what actually happened?” Emma’s question came with more than a note of hesitance, but she still asked.

Regina gave a resigned sigh. “I’m going to tell you what happened, on the condition that you hear me out completely before saying or doing anything.”

Emma gave her a long stare. “That’s not ominous or anything.”

“Hear me out,” Regina pleaded again, as she changed lanes on the interstate.

“Fine,” the blonde huffed.

“Well, it all started one night when I was looking out your window, trying to figure out what to do…Oh look, there’s Boston.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I left this one on a bit of a cliffhanger, but I'll have the next one up soon, promise!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 contains the usual fanfiction ownership disclaimer.

“So…”

“So.”

Regina regarded the younger woman on the other side of the sofa. It had been a tense time in Boston trying to find a woman who hadn’t wanted to be found. Lily had fought back but Emma had eventually overpowered the young dragon and convinced her to try coming back to Storybrooke.

They were back at the mansion. Henry was still with Snow and Charming, giving them a clear field to clear the air. Regina was equal parts nervous, terrified, and hopeful.

“So that was Lily. It was interesting to get a glimpse into your childhood,” she murmured, handing Emma a glass of sparkling apple juice and taking a sip of her own cider.

The blonde snorted. “Such as it was. I wanted to say thank you for being there. I know it was a disruption to your life but it meant a lot.”

Regina gave a noncommittal hum. “I was glad to be there to help, dear.”

Emma shifted in her seat, and Regina was glad to see that the movement didn’t elicit the wincing and sharp inhalations that would have previously followed any change in position. The blonde was healing nicely. “Our conversation got cut off when we got into Boston. You were telling me that you were looking through my bedroom window to figure out how to wake me up?”

With a hard swallow to collect herself after Emma’s bluntness, Regina set her glass aside. “Yes, I was. I think you’re right. It’s time to tell you everything, but let’s start at the beginning. I want to know why you put yourself under the Sleeping Curse to begin with. Quid pro quo, Miss Swan.”

With a deep breath, Emma settled one leg under her so she could turn to face the older woman. “Okay. Well with the way Rumple and Ingrid each wanted to exploit me…”

Regina interrupted her with a raised hand. “Give me some credit, dear. I raised a boy from a newborn into his teenage years. I may not have your ‘superpower’ but I do know when I’m being fed a line. What’s the real reason?”

The blonde turned in her seat, unable to face the other woman. Running her hands across her face, she blew out a sigh. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“I promise not to judge you,” Regina declared, sliding over and rubbing a calming circle on Emma’s upper back. “Believe me, no one has less reason to judge anyone else’s deeds than I. You’re safe with me,” she promised, her voice descending into a calming murmur as she finished.

Even muffled by her hands as it was, Emma’s voice was broken. “I wasn’t enough.”

“Enough for what?”

A shuddering breath followed by a deep swallow seemed to help Emma pull herself together. “My parents. Henry. Anyone.”

“What are you talking about?” Regina pressed, continuing her gentle rubbing of Emma’s back.

The blonde shrugged her off. “My parents replaced me with a new, normal kid. Snow even said as much on Neverland. Said she wanted a chance to try again, do it right this time. After growing up in the foster system, it hurt extra coming from her. Then when Ingrid was here and my magic was going crazy, she shielded the kid from me when I accidentally boiled the milk in his bottle, then accused me of dropping that lamppost onto David on purpose.”

“I remember that.”

“Then Henry moved back to stay with you after the whole Marian mess, when you hated me more than you ever have,” Emma continued, looking at the floor rather than meeting Regina’s eyes as she reminded her of those events.

“I couldn’t even get anyone to go out for my birthday. David and Snow were exhausted with Neal, Henry was with you, Belle and Ruby were busy, and Hook was with Tinkerbell. I spent my birthday all alone in my new – my old apartment.”

“Taking that with what happened with Gold and Ingrid I can see how you felt backed into a corner,” Regina sympathized.

Emma turned her body to look directly at Regina for the first time. “It was more than just being backed into a corner,” she emphasized, “I was all alone, or at least that’s how it seemed. It felt like no one would miss me, all that much if I was gone; and with Gold and Ingrid…I couldn’t come up with a better solution to every problem, you know?” she looked down again, surreptitiously wiping something from her cheek that may or may not have been glistening.

“Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m sorry for how I treated you,” apologized Regina, looking down at her hands, “and I can promise to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I didn’t realize until you were missing what a mistake I’d been making with how I treated you.”

“What if it’s not enough?” Emma whispered.

“Then I’ll just keep trying until you see that I want to make amends,” Regina declared.

With a shake of her head, Emma seemed to shrink in on herself even more. “No, I mean, what if I’m not enough for them? What if they’re happy with the perfect, normal prince they have now and there’s no room for me? What if Belle and Ruby don’t have time to hang out anymore?”

“Emma,” soothed the brunette, “That’s just not possible. Trust me. They all love you, and everyone realized the way we were taking you for granted. You don’t know what happened when you were missing. The whole town turned out for the search. Ruby must have sniffed out every inch of the woods, Belle was up in the clock tower with binoculars, Hook and Tink were sailing up and down the shore. They were frantic trying to find you.”

“Thanks,” said Emma with a barely-concealed sniff. She made sure to meet Regina’s gaze before she plowed on. “I’ve tried not to be too impatient with this, but I need to know who woke me up if it wasn’t Snow, Charming, or Henry. I can’t even imagine who it would be other than them,” she declared, but Regina could see the smallest signs of hope and fear in her eyes.

“Okay. I was looking through your window one night when something I saw gave me an idea,” she started, smoothing out her slacks and trying not to fidget in her own nervousness, “So I went to see your mother in the morning. That was when she sprang her inane idea for a kind of kissing booth, starring you. Getting the eligible bachelors from all around Storybrooke to see who could kiss you awake, thus proving himself your True Love.”

“Oh, _God_ please tell me you stopped her,” Emma pleaded, eyes wide in disbelief.

Regina chuckled, giving the blonde’s forearm a reassuring squeeze and trying not to jump at the brief spark she felt. “Never fear. I was your personal Savior with my alternative solution.”

“Which was?” prodded Emma, seemingly sensing Regina’s reluctance.

Taking a deep breath, she treated the moment much like removing Henry’s bandages when he was little. One quick pull, a little pain, and it was over. “I saw the dream catcher from your room. It gave me the idea that I could enchant it to see your memories. Your parents protested,” she hurried to clarify when she saw Emma’s hackles rising, “saying they didn’t want me to possibly invade your privacy. I told them I could enchant it to only see the last hour before you pricked your finger. My idea was that if there was one person you thought about more than any other, that person was most likely your True Love, familial or otherwise.”

Emma’s mouth hung open. She closed and opened it a few times, trying to make words come out, but she just managed to look like a blonde goldfish before finally catching up with herself. “Oh my God, Regina! That’s…that’s such a violation, but it would have been worse with the kissing booth. You know me,” she shrugged, “high school dropout and all. Is there a word in any language for feeling outraged but relieved at the same time?”

“You’re far more intelligent than you give yourself credit for, dear,” Regina reassured her, “And the self-deprecation is getting old.”

Realization dawned on the younger woman. “If you saw the last hour of my memories that would mean…”

“Yes,” Regina sighed, knowing the moment of truth was at hand, “That would mean that I saw that your thoughts were mostly about me.”

“And that means…”

“Yes. I was the one who kissed you awake,” Regina declared.

Emma’s eyes had grown even more and the ghost of a smile appeared on her face. “Wow.”

A moment later her entire demeanor changed. “Regina, I’m so sorry.”

The drastic shift threw Regina for a loop. “What in the world are you apologizing for?”

“I know some of the things you had to go through before Storybrooke. What your mom did to Daniel, then having Tink tell you that the pixie dust foretold Robin as your soul mate…you’ve never had a choice in anything to do with love. I never wanted to add to that list. I’m so sorry,” she apologized again, glancing around the room in visible distress.

“Emma! Please calm down!” exclaimed Regina, taking the blonde’s hands in her own and rubbing soothing circles with her thumbs. “I don’t see this as losing a choice. It’s more as having something pointed out to me that I was too blind to see in the first place. No matter what, it’s always been the two of us. Whether it’s taking care of Henry or taking care of Storybrooke…”

“Or falsely imprisoning each other, chopping off apple tree limbs…” Emma continued with the barest hint of a smile.

“Or making a planetary body move with our combined magic and love for our son,” Regina countered.

Emma gave an inelegant snort. “That wasn’t the only heavenly body I was staring at that night.”

Regina couldn’t help but feel the blush that spread across her face at the compliment. Inelegant as it might have been, it was direct and off the cuff and rang of sincerity. “Thank you. I noticed a certain someone that evening as well.”

“Can…can I…?” Emma trailed off, looking too shy to finish her request.

“Yes?”

The blonde took a deep breath. “Since I was asleep for the first one, I was hoping I could try to kiss you,” she blurted, flushing such a deep shade of red that she resembled a tomato.

A small chuckle escaped as Regina brought Emma’s hands to her lips. “That seems like a reasonable request to me,” she grinned.

Emma’s breath caught in her throat, mouth agape and eyes wide. She seemed immobile, so Regina’s smile widened as she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Emma’s for the second time. She hadn’t expected the pulse of colored light to shoot outward from them again, but it did. All the cares and concerns that had been weighing her soul down left her at once, leaving her lighter and freer.

“Wow,” Emma breathed.

Regina laughed out of sheer relief. “Wow, indeed.”

“So we’re doing this?” the blonde asked in a timid, small voice, interlacing her fingers with Regina’s.

Faced with the million-dollar question, Regina knew there was only one answer she could give, but she had to phrase it in just the right way. Sitting down on the couch once more, she took Emma’s hands in hers. “There is nothing I want more in the world right now, but,”

“I knew there was going to be a but,” muttered Emma, getting to her feet as she prepared to flee, face flushed in embarrassment.

Regina was too quick for her, though, jumping up to grasp the other woman’s arm and pull her gently back down to the couch. “Wait, please. It’s not what you’re thinking. I want it more than anything, but not until you’ve resolved the things that made you put yourself under the curse. If we started a relationship now, you wouldn’t be able to put your all into it. That’s not selfish; I wouldn’t have been able to put my all into it after my mother died. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” Emma said to her knees, looking anywhere but at her.

“You need to be able to love yourself before anything else,” Regina emphasized, “and I don’t think you’re there yet. I think you need to make peace with everything that made you use the Sleeping Curse before we can take that step with any confidence in our future.”

The blonde finally met Regina’s eyes. “I don’t know how to do that. This feeling of abandonment has been simmering inside me for thirty years, ever since my parents shipped me off to Maine with just a little boy to keep watch over me. I’ve never felt loved, never felt wanted, in  my entire life.”

Something in the way Emma phrased her despondence triggered a memory of a conversation Regina had once with Henry. The seeds of an idea, planted long before, grew and sprouted in that moment. She leaned forward with an ear-to-ear grin and held Emma’s gaze. “What if I told you that I could _prove_ that your parents didn’t want to do what they did? That they always meant to come with you and keep you safe?”

Emma stared at her, disbelief written all over her face.

“Come with me to my office in the morning and I will prove it. All you need to do is tell your parents how you feel,” declared Regina, knowing she had a way to begin making up for the anguish she’d inflicted on this innocent woman.

“Can I…I mean…I really don’t want to sleep alone tonight. Can we just maybe snuggle tonight?”

Regina drew herself up and held out her hands to Emma. “You never have to be shy to ask anything like that of me. Let’s go upstairs.”

* * *

“What are we doing here, Regina?”

The older woman turned back to Emma, hiding an indulgent smile at the blonde’s impatience. Ever since waking up next to each other for the first time, Emma had pushed and pushed to “For the eleventh time since we woke up this morning, you’ll see when everyone gets here. I promise you’ll be happy with how things turn out,” she declared, taking Emma’s hand and leading her into the office.

Snow and Charming were already waiting for them, talking in quiet voices with the Blue Fairy sipping from a to-go coffee cup from Granny’s and passing orders to Sister Astrid. All three looked up when Emma and Regina made their entrance.

“Emma! How are you?” Snow asked, getting to her feet and going to her daughter.

“That’s actually why we’re here,” Regina interjected, moving up next to Emma with a calming hand at the small of her back, a gesture which didn’t go unnoticed by anyone else in the room, “Archie is helping Emma process what happened, but she still needs to talk to you two about her feelings about…how she came to this world in the first place,” she finished, calling on her diplomacy to give Emma full reign to express herself.

Charming and Snow looked at her with wide open, hopeful faces while Blue looked confused but watchful. Regina surreptitiously waved her fingers and teleported the fairy’s wand into one of her desk drawers.

Emma looked at her parents and visibly steeled herself. “Mom, Dad. I guess I need to say a few things. Um,” she paused, taking a deep, broken breath before taking the plunge, “I don’t know that I’ve ever really gotten over being sent to this world. The way I grew up…it’s like there’s been a hole in my chest that’s never really filled. And then with everything that happened in Neverland and with N…my brother…I’ve never felt like I was anyone’s first choice, let alone my parents’.”

Snow’s eyes were full of shining tears threatening to overflow their banks while Charming looked like someone told him there was no more Christmas. “Oh honey,” Snow choked out, “I will never be able to apologize enough for what happened. We were led to believe that you were the Savior, and the only way to break the Curse was to send you through the tree. It was stupid but we believed what Rumplestiltskin told us. If we thought we had any choice we never would have sent you alone to this world.”

Blue started edging quietly toward the door, only to be met by Regina’s best death glare. “I don’t think you need to be leaving just yet,” she growled, casting a freezing spell on the fairy’s feet to keep her in place.

“What are you doing? You’re going to ruin everything!” the older woman hissed, struggling to free herself.

Regina’s glare turned into a smirk so wicked Zelena would have been impressed. “You’re not going anywhere until our little drama is complete. I’ve got big plans for you, Ruel.”

Turning her attention back to the other three occupants of the office, the Mayor observed Emma cocking her head to one side. “Alone? I wasn’t alone, Mom.”

The words afforded Regina one of her favorite sights, no matter how close she now was to her former enemies. Charming’s brow furrowed in confusion, making him look far too much like a Golden Retriever whose owner had teased with a laser pointer, sending the poor animal crashing into a wall. Snow’s expression was much the same. “But the tree only had enough enchantment for one. You had to go through by yourself.”

“Well someone lied to you then,” Emma snorted, “Because August – Pinocchio – came through with me. He was supposed to look after me, but he abandoned me as a baby in a foster home and left me to my own fate.” Emma’s voice was surprisingly free of bitterness as she recounted the youth’s betrayal.

Regina would swear for the rest of her life that the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. A choking silence fell over everyone in the room. Snow turned very slowly to face the Blue Fairy. “So August went through the portal with Emma?” she rumbled in a voice so low and lethal it would have rivaled any threat the Evil Queen could have uttered.

Blue started glancing around the room, looking for an escape. “Y-Your majesty, it was the w-wish of a parent for their child; there wasn’t anything I could do!” she stammered.

“ _So was mine_!” Snow roared, advancing on the woman. Regina chose that moment to release the freezing spell, but it went unnoticed by everyone else in the room. “I was supposed to go with her! I was supposed to keep her safe and you _lied_ to me! You told us the tree only had enough of an enchantment for _one_!”

Snow advanced, mayhem written all over her face. Blue reached for her wand only to discover its absence. “Regina?! Regina stop her!” she pleaded, frantically patting her pockets.

Regina gave a dramatic sigh, brushing lint off her jacket. “I guess I should do something.” She snapped her fingers, purple smoke suffusing the room. When the air cleared, Emma, Regina and David found themselves sitting in theater seats with bags of popcorn in their hands. “I’m going to sit back and enjoy watching this ass-kicking that’s been centuries in the making, you self-important little gnat. You told Green not to help me find my true love decades ago. You say you grant wishes to children, but it’s not all children, isn’t it? I grew up abused by a horrible mother, and your fairies never lifted a wing to help me. Now you’ve gone and ruined all these lives with this lie and you’re going to get what’s coming to you. Snow? Give her a few for me.”

Out of breath after her declaration, Regina sat back and munched on some popcorn, watching as Blue’s flabbergasted face was quickly obscured by Snow’s fist.

From there it became a bloodbath.

Without her wand, Blue was defenseless and Snow was an experienced brawler from her bandit days. The first jab knocked her back on her heels, but the following elbow to the gut and roundhouse kick to the temple dropped the fairy to the floor. From there it was all over. With a roar, pounced and started pummeling her unmercifully. Her initial roar turned into strangled moans with each new blow, interspersed with half-intelligible phrases like, ‘you lied to us’, and ‘I should have gone with her’.

Several minutes later David pulled a sobbing Snow off of Blue. Guiding her away, he took her into his arms and held her until her choked sobs trailed off into gurgles. Regina turned her attention to Emma. Wide-eyed, with tears trailing down her own face, the blonde seemed unable to look away from the scene.

Regina gave her a nudge toward her parents. Boneless, Emma stumbled over to the couple. Seeing her daughter, Snow moved away from David and embraced her. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she murmured over and over, fighting through renewed tears. “You were never supposed to have the life you did. I was supposed to be with you. I was supposed to have gone with you. Blue lied to everyone about the wardrobe.”

David and Regina shared a look, each noting the watery eyes of the other. David mouthed the words ‘thank you’, to her.

Sensing the movement, Emma turned and threw her arms around Regina. “You did this.”

Regina opened her mouth to respond, but the blonde looked down at the fairy on the floor. “What happens to her now?”

“I think I have an idea about that…”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See chapter 1 for disclaimer

Regina shifted in her sleep, wiggling back against the warm body behind her. She hummed in pure contentment when strong arms wrapped her in a loving embrace. Emma had texted shortly after lunchtime, saying she needed to spend some more time with her family and would return at some point that evening, so she’d gone to bed alone the previous evening…but now she had company.  

She’d gone to bed thinking over all the changes the day had wrought: atoning for one of the worst sins on her conscience and helping to mend the disconnect between Emma and her parents being just the tip of the iceberg. At least she hoped they’d made some progress.

Her bed had felt cold and empty when she’d retired. Spending even one night cuddled with Emma spoiled her, making her want the closeness and warmth of her True Love every night. A deep breath rewarded her with the scent she’d come to identify with home, and in her half-sleep she smiled. Feeling the arms tighten around her, Regina felt pure bliss.  

A hand slipped up from her waist, slowly exploring the silken fabric of her camisole on its tortuous journey. Regina’s happy hums turned onto moans when the hand gently cupped her breast, giving a soft squeeze. When the fingers splayed out and brushed the tight tip she gasped. Rolling over, she allowed the deliciously teasing fingers more access. A heavy weight settled on the mattress between her legs while tickling strands of hair brushed across her midsection.

As she roused up more and more, her awareness of her companion grew. Emma responded, using both hands to slide her top up and cup her breasts, teasing the nipples into hardened peaks. Regina’s eyes opened, taking in the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.

Emma’s head rested on her stomach, sheet framing her beautiful hair while her hands worked Regina’s increasingly sensitive skin. Bright, aware green eyes bored in on her own, fixing her in place. The blonde gave her a mischievous smile before placing feather-light kisses around her belly button. At Regina’s sudden intake of breath, Emma slid up and straddled her hips with a grin. Giving a slight tug on her top, she pulled Regina upright and crushed their lips together.  Kisses that began with such force usually presaged a bedroom battle for dominance, but to her surprise Emma allowed Regina to set the pace after the initial frenzy.

After a few seconds, Emma leaned back and trailed the tips of her fingers along the hemline of her top. When Emma met her gaze she could see a question swirling in emerald eyes. “Can I?” the blonde gave voice to the previously unspoken request. Understanding what she meant, Regina bit her lip and nodded. The other woman wasted no time as she slipped her fingers under Regina’s shirt and lifted it over her head.

A mischievous spirit whispered in her ear, making the brunette grin a little. Shaking her head back to flip the hair over her shoulders, Regina watched the exact moment a certain jiggling actually short-circuited Emma’s brain. The blonde’s jaw fell open, her pupils dilated and her body froze.

“See anything you like?” Regina husked.

Emma gulped, but finally met her eyes again. “I s-see a couple things I like,” she retorted after a brief stammer.

“Oh really? So what are you going to do about it?” the brunette challenged, running her fingers up and down her sides, lightly cupping her breasts.

Emma’s hands reached out, seemingly of their own volition, before stopping midway. “May I touch you?” she asked, giving Regina the chance to voice her consent. It was a foregone conclusion, but none of the older woman’s previous bedmates had asked for her permission before. The action sent her burgeoning arousal rocketing to unknown heights as she began to burn in the best way possible.

Regina nodded, too captivated by the look of sheer awe on the other woman’s face to ruin the moment with mere words. Emma looked like she’d been told that morning was both her birthday and Christmas combined. Her hands trembled as she reached for Regina’s chest, caressing each breast with feather-light touches. When she brushed the nipples once more, Regina was afraid her sharp inhalation was going to break the moment, but it just helped Emma grow bolder. With both thumbs working to make her nipples hard enough to cut glass, the blonde looked up to gauge her reaction.

Watching through hooded eyes, Regina held the blonde’s gaze, neither challenging nor submitting. With a gleam in her eye, Emma leaned over and blew a cool stream of air on her right nipple. At Regina’s moan, Emma chuckled and brought her mouth down at last on Regina’s right breast, using her tongue in much the same way as her thumbs. Moaning at the sheer pleasure of the sensation, Regina slid her hand around the back of Emma’s head, holding her in place in silent approval of the blonde’s ministrations.

After a few tantalizing minutes, Emma’s mouth moved left and repeated the same actions, driving Regina’s arousal to a frenzied pitch and leaving her panting. The blonde’s eyes dipped lower a few times, but every time she looked like she might be thinking about taking things south, she hesitated. “You don’t need to be shy, Emma. I won’t throw you out,” she whispered, stroking her head.

With a glance up to confirm, the unruly mane of blonde hair dipped lower. Regina felt deft fingers slipping inside the waistband of her thong and tugging it down with gentle pressure. She lifted her hips to aid the move. Before she could take a breath she was bare in front of her True Love for the very first time. This realm had a very apt expression for the feeling of fluttering nerves in the belly – it was called butterflies. Never in her life had Regina felt those butterflies flitting around her insides stronger than in that moment.

And Emma…Emma looked reverent, as if being allowed to touch her body was akin to divine privilege, the peak moment of her entire existence. She hesitated for long enough that Regina started to sit up, intending to suggest that if the time wasn’t right they could wait.

Any words of protest died on her lips as Emma started doing something that felt truly incredible somewhere below her navel. She started with soft kisses along her folds, but when she moved on to little flicks with her tongue on the sensitive bundle of nerves at the top, Regina saw stars.

Every nerve ending afire, her skin was one giant erogenous zone. Even the soft brush of blonde hair on her thighs seemed to drive her arousal to new heights. She palmed her own breasts, squeezing them and tugging. Just when she didn’t think she could take anymore, the blonde slipped two fingers inside and curled them upward. Regina’s body arched off the bed and she let out a scream as she crashed over the precipice and into her climax.

When her mind returned to the conscious world, Emma was leaning over her, stroking her hair with a soft smile. “Hi again,” she breathed.

“Hi,” Regina answered, fighting for control over her speech as she caught her breath. “That was…that was unreal,” she exhaled.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” chuckled the blonde.

Regina took a deep breath to calm the tingling still raging through her limbs. When she felt more confident in her movements, she raised up on one elbow with a predatory smirk. Getting her chance to finally share in intimacy with Emma had felt like a chance that would never happen, but now it was within her grasp.

She raised up and pressed their lips together, moaning into the blonde’s mouth as she tasted her essence on the other woman. Losing herself in the kiss, she reached around and pulled Emma to her, trying to maintain total body contact. The delicious sensations drove her arousal to new heights, along with her desire to please her partner…girlfriend…Emma.

As her hands reached for the hem of Emma’s own sleep shirt, the blonde froze. Her entire body went as stiff as a two-by-four, and when Regina pulled back from the kiss to see what was wrong, she saw a flash of pure panic in Emma’s eyes.

It was gone as soon as she saw it. Emma’s walls almost visibly slammed back into place. “Actually, how – how about I go make you some breakfast while you shower? I wanted to take care of you this morning.”

Before she could say anything, Emma was gone. “What the hell was that?” she wondered aloud, not really expecting an answer from the empty room.  When silence greeted her, Regina got out of bed with a huff and began her morning routine, puzzling over the blonde’s entirely unexpected reaction.

* * *

A heavenly scent wafted its way up the stairs as Regina made her way down. Her finely-honed olfactory nerves, trained by years of cooking her own meals, told her that Emma was preparing eggs along with bacon and some type of bread product. Possibly French toast, she guessed. A metallic scrape and sizzle helped confirm her guess.

The loud strains of an electric guitar suddenly crashed through the relative silence, freezing her in place. Emma hadn’t yet seemed to feel comfortable enough in her house to play her own music out loud, preferring her earbuds. Regina guessed it was out of a desire to not force anyone else to listen to her music, but since the blonde must have thought she was in the shower, she wanted to sit back and listen to Emma’s music.

Even more surprising was when the blonde started singing along softly to the lyrics.

 _I know you’re missing home_  
It’s been so long since you’ve been  
And that life you had in Boston  
Now ain’t nothing but a dream  
To be right there in the moment  
You’d give anything to be

 _It’s alright_  
‘Cause tonight  
We’re gonna paint the town green

 _Your friends are on the phone there_  
It's so close to Paddy’s Day  
And it kills you not to be there  
But life got in the way  
If I have to break the bank  
Spend every penny on your dreams

 _It’s alright_  
‘Cause tonight  
We’re gonna paint the town green

 _Just like home_  
Let’s color the streets like our own  
Let’s make this place feel like our own  
If it’s just you and me

 _It’s alright_  
‘Cause tonight  
We’re gonna paint the town green 

_And we travel on the subway_  
Like it was the Luas line  
Chase the Hudson to the Liffey  
Where we kissed for the first time  
Turn the city into Boston  
Yeah, wherever we may be

 _It’s alright_  
‘Cause tonight  
We’re gonna paint the town green

 _Just like home_  
Let’s color the streets like our own  
Let’s make this place feel like our own

_If it’s just you and me,_

_It’s alright_  
‘Cause tonight  
We’re gonna paint the town green 

_Just like home_  
Let’s color the streets like our own  
Let’s make this place feel like our own  
If it’s just you and me

_It’s alright_

_‘Cause tonight_

_We’re gonna paint the town green._

* * *

 

Midway through the song, Regina dug out her phone and activated an app that she’d downloaded when Henry’s musical tastes started making her the slightest bit uneasy. It ‘listened’ to sound playing and identified the song, also providing her with a copy of the lyrics. She noted that Emma had changed the name of the city in the song to the last place she’d lived before Storybrooke.

She dismissed the quick uneasiness trying to take root in her heart that Emma wanted to return to Boston. The blonde wouldn’t leave Henry or her…family. Regina had to wrack her mind to figure out why she was signing about missing ‘home’ and using Boston in the lyrics. Looking around, she caught a glimpse of the calendar she’d hung up in her kitchen ever since Henry was in school and she needed to coordinate her activities with his. The current date was February 27. Understanding dawned and her heart felt a fresh pang for the other woman. The seed of an idea took root in her mind, starting to germinate in her subconscious.

“Something smells positively delicious in here, and I’m sure the food is edible, too,” she flirted, rounding the corner into the kitchen. The younger woman was standing at the stove flipping the eggy bread with one hand and turning over some scrambled eggs with the other. Regina stood, impressed with the display of dexterity, until her words startled Emma. The spatula dropped to the floor out of her nerveless fingers, scattering bits of egg across the marble tile. The color of a tomato, Emma rushed to clean up the mess, but Regina used her magic to clear it away with a wave of her hand. “It’s okay, dear. I shouldn’t have startled you like that.”

Taking Emma’s hands in her own, Regina drew her into an embrace, resting her cheek on the slightly taller woman’s shoulder. “You ran off too quickly this morning. I was planning to keep you in bed for a while longer.”

Emma blinked, and Regina could almost see the gears turning in the younger woman’s head. “You’ve done so much for me that I just wanted to do something for you. I hope you like French toast. Henry’s never mentioned you making it for him, so I wasn’t sure. Do you like it?”

Such was the hope and desire for approval in her eyes that Regina could only smile. “Of course I like it, dear. I’m sure it will be perfect.”

“Speaking of things you’ve done for me, what happened to Blue?”

Remembering how she’d dealt with the gnat while Emma was reconnecting with her family brought a happy smirk to Regina’s face.

The blonde laughed. “I know that look. What did you do?”

With an elegant shrug, Regina looked up at her from under her eyelids. “Do you remember the potion that Rumple came up with that lets a person from the Enchanted Forest travel outside the Curse barrier and retain their old personality?”

Emma covered her mouth, more to hide a smile than anything else. “Oh I like where this is going.”

“I may or may not have used an appearance-changing spell on her to make her look like the fairy godmother from those god-awful Disney movies and sent her over the town line,” Regina began, but had to stop when Emma’s laughter grew too loud for her to continue.

“Oh, God it’s _perfect_!” Emma wheezed, “Either she remains a nun for the rest of her life, or she tries to tell them who she really is and gets tossed into a loony bin somewhere. You’re a genius!”

“Glad to help, dear,” answered Regina, warmth suffusing her entire being at the praise, “But the idea to kick her out of town was your mother’s. I can’t take _all_ the credit.”

“Shhh,” Emma murmured, still smiling as she leaned in for a kiss. Their lips had barely brushed when the acrid scent of smoke filled the air, sending them both into coughing fits.

“Shit!” shouted the blonde, reaching for a fire extinguisher. Regina was much more direct, blasting the fire with magic that took the smoke out of the air as well.

Silence descended over the wreckage in the kitchen. Emma froze in sheer mortification, not even looking at Regina. A strangled laugh broke through the quiet, turning quickly into out-and-out giggles from the brunette. Emma finally looked at her, face as red as a tomato, when Regina finally caught her breath. “At least it wasn’t a toaster this time, dear.”

That did it. The offhand remark, spoken without malice or mockery, broke through Emma’s embarrassment and had them both sitting on the floor, clutching their sides to catch their breath. Eventually Regina found herself leaning on the other woman, breathing deeply and feeling the gradual ebb of the endorphin tide that accompanies full-body laughter. “You are such a beautiful person, Emma Swan,” she murmured.

Expecting a ‘thank you’ or a contented hum at the least, she was surprised when Emma tensed next to her. “Yeah, well. I’m glad one of us thinks so.”

Regina turned to face the other woman. “What do you mean?” she asked, keeping her voice soft. This felt like one of life’s important moments, where she could either help Emma overcome some of her personal demons or push her too fast and too far. The gentle approach was called for.

“Nothing. It was just a joke,” Emma muttered, getting to her feet, “I should clean up this mess.”

She was pulling away. Regina jumped to her feet, grabbing Emma’s hands in a gentle hold. “Forget the mess. I can clean that up with a flick of my finger. This is the second time today that you’ve pulled away from me. What is it? What’s so wrong with me appreciating you?”

When Emma wouldn’t meet her eyes, Regina knew she’d hit the nail on the head. “It’s just…I’m not beautiful. I know I’m not. I’m broken. I don’t even know why you’re putting up with me.”

“Emma,” Regina protested, stomach dropping through the floor at the other woman’s obvious emotional agony.

The blonde shook her head. “I’m not physically beautiful, either. My scars are more than just on the surface, but they’re there too. I’ve always thought I was either too skinny or too fat.”

Heart breaking, Regina pulled Emma into her arms. “That’s one of the biggest reasons I understand you enough to love you: I’m the same exact way. You know about my mother. You know about Daniel. I’m not exactly the model for a healthy childhood,” she said, laying her head on Emma’s collarbone and inhaling a lungful of her unique scent, “I don’t love you in spite of your scars. I love you _because_ of them.”

Regina felt something warm hit her cheek, which immediately cooled. Understanding dawned. She pulled back and saw the telltale tracks of tears running down Emma’s cheeks. Taking a chance, she pushed up on her toes and kissed each one dry.

“Come back upstairs with me and let me show you how beautiful you are to me,” she whispered, holding a watery green gaze with her promise.

Swallowing back what looked to be a huge lump in her throat, Emma gave her a wordless nod in answer. Regina kept their fingers interlocked as she led Emma back to their bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost come to the end of my little project here. I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I liked writing it. The placement of 'Paint the Town Green' by the Script might seem a bit odd, but it will make sense when I post the final chapter, I promise! :)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for disclaimer.

17 March

“And you’re all familiar with what you need to do?” Regina asked into the phone as she paced her study. It had been a very long two weeks getting everything she needed for the spell she’d cast the next day, not to mention keeping her girlfriend in the dark about what would really happen.

 _“Yes, Regina. We know what you want us to do. You’ve explained it a dozen times. Now go get some rest. Today’s a big day,”_ Snow assured her former stepdaughter.

“More than you know,” Regina murmured.

_“What? What did you say, Regina? What else do you have planned?”_

Regina hung up, unwilling to listen to any more of Snow’s increasingly agitated questions. There was no answer she could have given Emma’s mother at that moment that wouldn’t have given away her every intention, especially with Snow’s inability to keep secrets.

The conversation with Snow had to happen after the rest of her household was asleep. Emma’s hearing was just too good to chance an accidental overhearing of her plans. As she climbed the stairs, taking care to keep her steps light to avoid waking anyone, Regina’s mind drifted off into the plans for the next day that only she knew. An excited smile spread across her face and her stomach did an excited flip. She listened to her son’s peaceful snoring as she made her way past his door, happy in the knowledge that her family was safe.

Woolen socks – March in Maine could still be very chilly – made no noise on her soft carpeting. Her bedroom door opened in silence, affording her the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Blonde hair splayed across a pillow like a fiery halo, framing a face so angelic in sleep it took her breath away.

She slid carefully onto her side of the bed, propping herself up on an elbow to take in the sight of her slumbering love. Emma always looked more peaceful in sleep than she did awake. Every troubled crease, every worry line faded, leaving…sheer perfection. Her milky skin was only the window dressing. As high as her walls were, the blonde’s emerald eyes were always windows into her emotions. One only had to know what to look for. Her lithe, fit figure looked like it was all hard planes and sharp lines, but much like Emma herself, when you got past the outer layers, she had a softness to her. Regina gave a pleasant shiver at the recent memory of uncovering just how soft some of Emma’s curves really were. Such was the reward of getting to know the real Emma Swan.

Her shiver made enough movement that Emma stirred, blinking bleary eyes open to look at her. “Wha? Whass goin’ on?”

Regina’s lips quirked up at the corners. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just went downstairs for a minute. When I came back up here and saw how beautiful you were, I had to get back in bed.”

“Aww,” Emma returned the smile through her clearing eyes, “that’s one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me.”

“Get used to it. As a matter of fact, today is all about you,” the brunette promised, reaching out to tuck a strand of golden silk behind Emma’s ear, “I have so many things planned for you today.”

“You didn’t have to go to all that trouble just for me,” protested the blonde, “I’d be happy with a day of just the two of us.”

Leaning over to plant a soft, chaste kiss on her lips, Regina regarded her girlfriend. “That’s where you’re wrong. That very attitude is why I will be doing more things like this; to show you how very special you are and how much you mean to me. I won’t lose another minute of our time together.”

Emma blinked a few early tears away. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“Don’t worry. You will soon enough,” Regina’s smile broadened into a grin, “Now, get your tight little butt into the shower while I finish up my preparations downstairs.”

“I can’t convince you to join me?” Emma yawned, stretching her arms out over her head, pushing her breasts out as far as they would go in her pajama tank top.

The brunette swallowed hard on a suddenly dry throat, trying to remember the reasons why she shouldn’t just rip the flimsy night shirt off and take a nipple into her mouth. “As much as I would love that, there are things I wanted to get done for you. Rain check?”

“Oh, fine,” Emma mock-pouted, sliding out of bed and giving Regina a good long look at her naked rear end swaying on the way to the bathroom.

“Woman’s going to be the death of me,” she muttered, heading for the door to go downstairs, “but what a way to go.”

* * *

Emma made her way down the stairs as she put her still-damp hair back in a ponytail. She hadn’t known what Regina had planned for the day, but since it was her birthday, she decided to dress how she wanted and slid into a comfy pair of leggings and her favorite hoodie.

She couldn’t get Regina’s parting words out of her mind. Ever since she’d found her parents, they had said the words, but years of abandonment had left her suspicious of empty declarations. Regina’s promise was the sincerest she’d heard in her entire life, but the kicker was that she followed through. Her parents had their second-chance kid, and with the drama they’d gone through during Ingrid’s scheme had left a wound on their relationship only fixed when Regina set up the Blue Fairy.

Regina had written herself onto every corner of Emma’s life, and the blonde was beginning to believe that she would be there for the foreseeable future.

These thoughts were driven from her mind when she turned the corner and stopped cold. She had the strangest sensation that she was doing a wonderful imitation of a goldfish with her mouth opening and closing with no words coming out.

Regina stood at the stove, doing something that probably involved cooking food from the motions her arms were making, but the only reason Emma was aware of Regina’s arm movements was the way they made her perfect peach of an ass jiggle.

She was nude, or at least nude from the back. Emma could see some form of garment like an apron protecting her front. _Thank God for that,_ she thought to herself. The brunette was barefoot, which Emma had told her early on she preferred. It was hard to break Regina of the habit of her sky-high heels, but Emma eventually explained that she couldn’t get herself fully into the mood if she knew Regina was that uncomfortable in her footwear.

Regina must have sensed her presence, because she turned to look over her shoulder and the expansive visage of curvaceous olive-skinned flesh confirmed to the blonde that the apron was the only garment Regina wore. “Oh my God,” she managed to breathe.

At the comment, Regina faced her, and Emma couldn’t bring herself to stifle the smile that came to her face at the sexy leprechaun apron that greeted her. A very slim band of ruffled green lace ringed the almost indecent neckline putting Regina’s otherworldly cleavage on display. The varying shades of green in the apron set out an intricate design in light gold, ending just barely below the juncture of her thighs. “Top of the mornin’ to ye,” the brunette greeted her.

“Only if you take that top off,” Emma retorted with a smirk.

“Why? So you can find my pot of gold?” Regina winked.

Emma’s jaw flapped in the breeze again. “Damn, woman. You’re going to be the death of me,” she repeated a refrain that was becoming common the more she got to know her True Love and unconsciously echoing Regina’s own mock lament from the bedroom.

“Wouldn’t want that now, would we?” husked the older woman, “Not when I have such plans for you, for us.” So saying, she reached back and undid the strings behind her back, then reached up and did the same to the strings behind her neck, letting the apron pool around her feet.

“Oh, look at that. You found me pot o’ gold,” Regina attempted in an Irish accent that Emma had to admit was pretty good.

Amazed at her ability to form words with a mouth as dry as a desert (and other places that were just the opposite) Emma looked her girlfriend up and down. “S-so what’s my prize?”

Flashing a devilish smirk, Regina turned and plated their omelets along with what Emma could see were pancakes before sauntering over to the table and setting them down next to a bottle of stout for Emma and a mimosa for herself.

“It’s not my birthday. Oh, my God. Is someone dying? I’m sick, isn’t it? That’s why you’re a nude goddess serving me my dream breakfast.”

Laughing by the end of the rant, the older woman took Emma’s hands in her own and calmed her the best way she knew how: apply lips and wait for the blonde to relax.

Worked every time.

When she felt the other woman’s breathing even out and her posture lose most of its tension, she pulled back but held eye contact. “Nothing is wrong. No new villain is terrorizing our sleepy little town. No one is sick, least of all you.”

Pure confusion shone out of emerald orbs. “Then, what’s all this for? Kegs and eggs and...you?” she asked, gesturing to the food and Regina’s nude form.

With a warm smile, the brunette took Emma into a warm embrace, chuckling when she felt hands slide down to cup her ass, Emma’s favorite place to rest her hands. “All this is because it’s a special day for you, and it’s because I wanted to show you how special you are to me.”

Emma’s eyes took on a watery shine that she blinked several times rapidly to clear, refusing to cry in any but the most overwhelming situations. “You’re too good to me,” she not quite choked, swallowing hard on a lump in her throat.

“It’s about damn time someone was,” said Regina with conviction, “now let’s eat before your food gets cold and then you can claim your reward for finding my pot of gold.”

Emma gulped.

* * *

The meal was a rousing success. At least, the part of the meal that Emma could remember. For the rest of her life she wouldn’t have any memory of what Regina actually cooked for them. Sitting at the table, with Regina while eating her cooking, with the brunette fully nude was one of her top fantasies ever. She’d only ever mentioned it once, in bed shortly after they’d gotten together. She hadn’t really expected anything to come of it, but Regina had apparently been listening and planning.

Then Regina took it to the next level. When she’d finished most of her food, the older woman took the bottle of syrup they’d used for their pancakes and drizzled it on her chest, letting the thick, sweet liquid drip down her breasts and onto her stomach. By the time it reached her navel, Emma had Regina lying on the table, doing her level best to clean the other woman off.

The resulting shower – pleading the excuse that she’d needed to clean any excess stickiness off of herself Emma joined Regina in the bathing –  lasted the duration of the hot water and led to more adult fun in the bedroom.

Sometime after a lunch that Regina conjured to refuel their bodies afterward, they stumbled downstairs, Regina promising a surprise if they could only leave the house. After enough pleading that she was legitimately embarrassed at herself, Emma acquiesced, taking her sweet time ogling Regina while she dressed in a charcoal-colored power suit with an emerald blouse. Emma eventually, grudgingly, joined her, wearing dark skinny jeans and a deep forest green sweater.

She was just in time to see Regina finish wiggling her fingers and sending a stream of purple smoke out the window. “What was that?”

“The second part of your surprise for the day,” the brunette answered with an enigmatic smile.

Pursing her lips, Emma debated using her Charming charms to get the trough out of her girlfriend, but decided to let her have the surprise. “How does my makeup look?”

“You look amazing, dear. Not that you needed any makeup in the first place,” grinned the older woman, tracing Emma’s cheeks with a soft thumb.

Still feeling a thrill of pleasure at the praise, Emma deflected. “If you’re hoping that flattery will get you into these jeans later on, I have to say you’re wasting your time. You were already going to get some, anyway. I’m kind of easy that way.”

Regina snorted. “You are anything but easy, my dear, and worth so much more than mere words. Now, shall we begin our celebration?”

“Lead the way, my Queen,” Emma requested, holding out the crook of her elbow for Regina.

* * *

When they got to Storybrooke’s downtown area, Emma stopped dead in her tracks. “This…this is what the magic was for? You did this?”

The town was changed. Instead of a neo-colonial seaside hamlet, Granny’s, Gold’s pawn shop, the post office, and every other building had been transformed into a postcard-picture quality representation of a town in Ireland. The streets were now cobblestone, and Granny’s was now advertising itself as The Wolf and Rose Public House.

“You did all this for me?” Emma turned to Regina, stunned into disbelief at the extent of Regina’s surprise. “Why?”

“Aside from the fact that you’re my True Love and making you happy makes me happy?” the brunette snarked, “Not long after we got together I happened to overhear you singing a song in the kitchen, something about painting the town green. I looked up the lyrics and you changed the city name to Boston. It wasn’t hard to figure out that after living there for a few years this might be one of your favorite holidays. It’s not enough of a gesture to make up for everything I’ve done to hurt you in the past, but maybe it’s a small step,” she finished, looking down at her fingers, entwined together in her nervousness.

“Regina,” Emma breathed, taking the other woman’s hands, untwisting her fingers and wrapping her in a bear hug, “No one has ever done anything even close to this big for me. I just, there are no words. I love you so much,” she finished, hoping the tears in her eyes weren’t apparent in her voice.

“I love you, too,” Regina answered, holding on just as tight, “But that’s not all the surprise yet. Listen.”

Emma stilled, focusing her senses on hearing anything Regina might have been talking about. The sounds of music, singing, and general revelry slowly made their way to her ears. “Is that…?” she trailed off.

“Uh-huh,” the brunette grinned.

Without another word, Emma dashed into the temporary pub, coming to a screeching halt in the doorway.

Joining her, Regina peeked over her shoulder. The interior had been changed to reflect the images of pubs she’d seen in her research. Instead of chrome and vinyl booths and tables, there were now high-backed dark wood booths with cushions. The tables were similarly transformed. Mirrors with stenciled Celtic designs ringed the interior space, and a crackling fireplace took up one corner. Everything was hung with green decorations. Shamrocks, four-leaf clovers, Claddagh designs, and the intricate knots found in Celtic artwork ringed the interior.

Everything with the townspeople was as she’d instructed as well, she saw. The dwarves had set up a temporary area in the back corner for their band. Part of her spell had given them knowledge of Irish musical instruments. Grumpy held the bodhran, Dopey was the fiddler, Doc had the accordion, Sneezy was picking at a banjo, Happy was puffing away on the uilleann pipes, and the singer was none other than Bashful. They were moving through a rousing chorus of _The Black Velvet Band_ , to the general enjoyment of the townspeople. So much of their time was spent lamenting the world they’d come from, Regina reflected, that they hadn’t had any time to really appreciate the world they were living in, other than having central heating, indoor plumbing, and the Internet.

Hook and Tink had a table in the back while the now-leaderless fairies occupied a long bench table in the middle of the room. Geppetto and Pinocchio were off to one side, laughing at something the boy had said while Belle sat at the bar, leaning over and talking to Ruby.

Maybe this idea was a good plan for more than just Emma. She fingered the small box in her pocket, hoping that Emma’s reaction portended a positive answer to a certain question she was planning to pop later on. A certain question she’d debased herself enough to ask the Charmings for their blessing in advance, she remembered with a pained grimace that was in no way genuine.

The same Charmings who were in a booth to the side of the room. Neal was in a high chair being fed what looked to be a pureed version of some of the Irish dishes Granny was serving just that day – mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, and the like. “Awww,” Regina couldn’t stop herself from cooing at his outfit. Snow had dressed him in a miniature white Aran sweater with a matching cap to keep his head warm. David wore a similar sweater, with a black vest and a cap on his head while Snow somehow made a simple peasant’s dress look almost royal. David and Henry were tucking in just as eagerly as his son to the non-pureed version of beef stew while Snow was picking at a plate of fish and chips in between spooning more food into her son.

“I have to hand it to you, Regina,” Ruby said as she approached, “This idea of yours was even better than you expected. Everyone loves the new menu items, the special booze, and the music. We may have to figure out a way to do this more regularly. I haven’t seen so many people in here having so much fun in years.”

“I’m glad that people are enjoying themselves,” Regina said, taking in the sight of a packed pub full of merriment.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her love bouncing back to her with a Cheshire-cat grin and two pint glasses full of dark liquid that she knew to be the stout Ireland was justly famous for.  “This is amazing, Regina! It’s just like my favorite bar back in Boston,” the blonde bubbled. “Here, I got your first pint of the night.”

“Slainte,” Regina toasted, clinking her glass to Emma’s and enjoying the look of pure adoration sent her way.

The night was a rousing success. After a little time to eat, David and Hook cleared the floor for dancing, and the liquor and music flowed. Emma was radiant. Regina’s breath caught in her throat numerous times at the sheer joy on the blonde’s face, and gratitude that she’d gotten her head out of her ass in time to be the one that helped put that look there.

She eventually found her way outside, taking a moment to enjoy the clear, cool air while Emma spent time with her family. The moment also gave her time to steel her courage for the coming talk. Her rational mind kept telling her that she and Emma were confirmed True Loves, that they were living together, and that the blonde’s answer was a mere formality, but her traitorous heart, doubtful and insecure after a lifetime of abuse and loss, refused to let her put much stock in reason.

“Hey, there you are,” said Emma as she made her way out, “I was wondering where you’d gotten to. Why are you out here all by yourself?” she asked, sitting down next to Regina at one of the outdoor tables Granny had chosen not to use on the chilly evening.

“I needed a few minutes to myself to think,” Regina answered, half-truthfully.

“Ooookay,” Emma drew out her response, “Think about what? Is everything okay?” Little worry lines began to appear around the corners of her eyes.

“Oh, no Emma. Everything’s fine. There’s just something I wanted to talk to you about tonight and I needed the quiet to frame my thoughts,” she rushed to explain, hoping to alleviate any concerns Emma might be developing.

“Talk? You’re giving me the ‘we need to talk’ talk? I know I’m not as neat and tidy around the house as you’d like but I promise I’ll do better,” Emma started panicking at an imagined impending breakup.

“No, no. It’s not that at all,” said Regina, trying to soothe the other woman. Taking Emma’s hands, she held the blonde’s gaze and tried to will her to understand. “I came out here to help calm my mind because I needed to ask you something.”

“So here goes,” she said, taking a deep breath, “You know my history, how I was forced into an arranged marriage with the King. It was a misery, and I ended up killing him to get my freedom. After that I swore I would never find myself trapped in a marriage again. Never suffer the indignity of having to do my ‘wifely duties’ whether I wanted to or not. For almost four decades, I was free.

“But I wasn’t happy,” she continued, noting Emma’s face starting to fall. “I was alone and unloved. Until Henry came along. Then all of the sudden there was this perfect little screaming bundle who looked to me to sustain his needs. I was needed. I was loved. He became my entire world, and then when he got the damned author’s book, things started to change. He started looking at me with fear, then anger. I’d lost my little prince the day he ran away to find you.

“Then you came along. At first I hated you. How could I not? Whether you wanted to or not you were usurping my role in his life, but once we got through that rough patch, when you woke him from my curse,” she hung her head in shame at that deed, which prompted Emma to squeeze her hands in reassurances that it was truly over and forgiven, “When you came back from the Enchanted Forest and we saved the town together, when we moved the moon with our magic, but most of all when you fought to keep Henry in my life, acknowledging that I was the mother that had raised him to be the man he was, I started to fall for you. I started to see how amazing you truly are. Growing up the way my curse forced you to and still coming out of that a strong, caring woman who loved with every part of her being, someone who dropped her old life and moved up to a strange town to be near her son, then stayed to help her family forge a new life after the curse and fought monsters by my side…I was honored to call you a friend, even when I wanted more. I loved you so much, Emma.”

“I’ve loved you just as long, Regina, but what is all this about? What are you doing here?” Emma asked, no small note of fear in her voice.

Regina looked at her, aware of tears threatening to overflow her eyes. “It was in the moment when I saw you under a cursed sleep where no one could reach you, that I felt the sense of crushing loss more than at any other time in my life. It was in that moment when I knew for sure.”

“Knew what?”

With a wavering smile, Regina slid out of her chair and got down on one knee.

“Oh, my God,” Emma gasped, eyes wide as teacup saucers.

“It was in that moment that I knew that I had found the one person who could change my mind,” answered the brunette, reaching into her pocket.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Emma repeated, hands moving to her face involuntarily.

“It was in that moment that I knew that I had found the one person who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with,” Regina finished, taking the black velvet box out of her pocket and looking up at her love. Casting the Dark Curse was nothing compared to staring into the blonde’s eyes, teetering on the precipice of the question she was about to ask.

Regina opened the box, showing Emma the engagement ring and its princess cut emerald surrounded by pure white diamonds. “Emma Swan: will you change the story of my life, give me my happy ending, and accept my promise to give you yours? Would you do me the incredible honor of becoming my wife?”

Emma fell to her knees, ignoring the ring as she took Regina’s face in both her hands. Unsure whether the tears she saw were her own or Emma’s, Regina blinked them away, wanting to capture this moment for the rest of her life. “You wonderful, infuriating, frustrating, loving, caring, amazing woman,” breathed the blonde, “Of course I will!”

And with that she crushed their lips together in a kiss of pure love. They broke apart, gasping for breath and laughing in giddy relief at the dissipation of the tension. “The ring!” Regina exclaimed.

Emma held out her left hand, coughing, crying, and grinning all at the same time. When Regina slipped the band on Emma’s third finger, they each heard a roaring sound. Looking over their shoulders, they saw as many people as could fit crowded around the windows of the restaurant.

They were cheering as hard as they possibly could, waving their hands, hugging each other, and in the case of the couples, kissing at the pure joy of the moment. The door burst open, and no one would have been able to keep Snow from being the first person out to congratulate them. David followed soon after, along with Henry, Ruby, Granny, and even the dwarves until Emma and Regina were surrounded by the visible love of all of Storybrooke.

“I love you,” Emma said, giving her a chaste, gentle kiss.

“I love you, too,” answered Regina, feeling more joy and happiness in that one moment, in a realm she didn’t even know existed before the darkest of curses, standing surrounded by former enemies, embracing the love of her life.

“This is our happy beginning; the beginning of the rest of our lives together,” she promised, before the assembled people moved back into Granny’s to celebrate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally come to the end of this long journey. Thank you for being a part of it with me :)


End file.
